Fife Rocks! Series: Oil Shale Letterbox Hybrid
allieballie: Archiving this series as and when there are issues. Been out for years now - time to go!
Fife Rocks! Series: Oil Shale
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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This is the fifth cache in a letterbox series inspired by the Geological Wall at St Andrews.
The Geological Wall contains 22 rocks collected from all over Fife. A leaflet created by the St Andrews Geological Heritage Project gives details of each rock, along with Ordnance Survey grid references of their source localities. Hopefully this series will end up taking cachers to each of these localities. It is my intention to hide the caches as close as possible to the grid references given in the leaflet - this may mean that the caches are not necessarily going to be hidden in scenic, historical or interesting places! The information about the rock given below has been adapted from the Geological Wall leaflet.
This type of shale was formed from accumulated mud at the bottom of a lake or lagoon. The mud was rich in algae which eventually broke down to form hydrocarbons. In the 19th Century oil shale was distilled in Burntisland to produce oil, paraffin and waxes. One tonne of shale could yield between 70 and 200 litres of oil.
We parked in a lay by at N56 04.202 W003 13.072. From here you have to walk back down the main road (be very careful - cars come along here at high speed sometimes!) and enter the wood at the sign for the Fife Cycle Network/Route. The walk up to the cache is pretty uninspiring so I have set the cache in an awkward place to make up for this! Please take great care - I twisted and sprained my foot quite badly whilst trying (and failing!) to reach the hiding place I originally wanted! The steep bank is full of oil shale and is not stable at all! You will have to find a safe way of getting to the cache - it is possible with a bit of lateral thinking (and maybe acrobatics!).
Cache contains log book, wooden stamp and ink pad only (and something to write with of course!)
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Guveq sraprcbfg gb gur evtug bs gur "Qnatre" fvta.