Cold War History
Missile silos? Do what John? I had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to attend an all-day training session at a client’s site, so rather than driving down at stoopid o’clock in the morning I chose to stop over in Newbury. Actually, I’d been on their site for much of the day anyway. I’d been doing whatever work I was allowed to do prior to doing the training session. The day’s activity finished quite early and it was a pleasant evening so I took the opportunity to go and have a gawp at a bit of old Cold War history by having a wander around the now-abandoned old missile silos at the RAF base at Greenham Common.
I’d like to say this was planned, but it wasn’t really. I’d noticed there were a few geocaches near the hotel but hadn’t researched enough to realise they were on the old airbase. This is the old airbase that was famous throughout the 1980s as a result of the women’s peace camps that were set up to protest the US Air Force’s deployment of nuclear capable cruise missiles there. Greenham Common was the main UK base, with a secondary, somewhat smaller, deployment at RAF Molesworth, which is (very bizarrely and unknowingly at the time) where I went caching on my next “big” day out (see Molesworth Melee).
Oops!
I managed to drag the evening out quite late, as it was light until well after 8:30 pm. It was a lovely night apart from one part where I decided to go off-piste a little bit. There was a “quick” direct route between two caches rather than following the paths. It rewarded me with a very wet boot and a muddy trouser leg. I ended up in a patch of ground that was what horse racing pundits would describe as “heavy” going.
When I’d done walking around the western end of the old airfield I jumped into the car. I found a couple of urban ones, including a church micro. Adding that lot to the three church micros I stopped off for either on the way into work or the way back and it added up to a nice little day of 19 finds.
The caches I found during the day were :