“Pass the second hand to me"
demanded Douglas.
"This pillar thing?" said Erin, puzzled, and held up a peculiar
metal contraption. "No: near the keel lagger, there, the second
hand, not the bar ruler" exclaimed Douglas, pointing excitedly, as
Erin looked even more baffled.
Michael, the mechanic, casually
reached in front of Erin and passed the miniature clock hand to
Douglas, who was still trying to hold the watch face in
position.
"The summit of my achievements"
said Douglas proudly, after finally getting the second hand into
place. "Years of study and practice have gone into making this, my
first ever timepiece. Now the watch is complete. One hill left to
climb, however, is to wind it up and set the time".
Erin, of a sceptical nature,
was trying to avoid sneering at the rather unfinished-looking
mechanism. "If the infernal thing works, I'll eat my hat: in fact,
I'll eat a second one for dessert" she said, closing the brass lock
of the tool case. "All day I've been helping you get these last few
parts into place, and now it's all going south as soon as you start
it up".
"This watch is a masterpiece: have faith!" cried Douglas and began
winding, at which point the mechanism sprang open and deposited
escapement, mainspring, balance wheel and sundry tiny parts in a
spread pattern around the whole room.
"This has just been a total
waste of time" moaned Erin, and left, shaking her head.
Douglas, the vanquished, looked up at Michael.
"A number of words come to mind..." he murmured.
You
will know that you have the correct directions straight away! If
you can’t find the place mentioned using the Ordnance Survey
map, consider the Useful Advice below. If it was too easy, see how
many Manx place names you can find in the story.
A hint: the first word in the directions is “the”.
Another hint: Read the first and last sentences particularly
carefully for clues to the method of reading the directions in the
story.
Useful Advice and Manx phrases:
Keep watch and ward (Dy reayll arrey as wardys)
The cache is on the far side of the hill (Yn cheu elley
jeh'n cronk)
The cache can only be found by day ('Sy
laa)
Once
the number has been obtained from the first part, follow these
instructions to get the co-ordinates of the cache;
If the number is ABCDE, add D and E to give F, add C to F to give
G, and then add A to G to give H.
The cache is to be found at
N 54°0G.0F1 W 004.43.H2F.
Don’t go direct from the first part to the cache:
it’s too steep. There is a good path from the waypoint car
park (half an hour walk from car park to cache), although this
becomes narrow and tricky closer to the cache itself. The cache is
in a lonely, wild but beautiful place with an ancient history,
about which you should become educated on the
way.
The
cache is an ammo box containing a Geocaching patch, Geocaching
pencil, timepieces (please leave), Marine Timekeepers stamps,
Tolkien keyring, Plumb The Depths 45 keyring and a Canadian
Geocoin. Take note of the time: it could prove useful
later.
