Going Local

Saturday 15th July 2023

I headed down towards Two Tree Island in Leigh-on-Sea first as there was a newly published Letterbox down there and they are always handy.😀 I had an easy find of the Cockleshell Letterbox at 0555 and beleive it, or not, there were skateboarders doing their thing.🥴 I drove up the hill and parked behind the police station. I soon found the VHS ~ Leigh-on-Sea trad tucked away in the corner and headed off down the road.

I had to work my way back to the London Road for one of the Free Little Library trads before doubling back towards Chalkwell Station. The Chalkwell Crook was a very cunning trad which I missed on the first pass but no problems on the second.👍🏻

I had a bit of a drive down to Prittlewell to the Railway Tavern for one of those I can see the pub trads. This was quickly found but I also started on a new AL series - Southend Train Stations ~ SideTracked. Prittlewell Station on the Southend Victoria line was the first base. Next up was my first try for a Mystery cache. Down on the Greyhound Retail Park on the site of the old Southend Stadium, incidentally Southend United's home ground from 1934 until 1955. I was looking for Eyes Down which had me flummoxed for quite a while. I had only seen this variety of cache a couple of times which added to my uncertainty.🙁

I continued down Sutton Road and parked as near as I could (for free) to Southend Victoria Station. I added another AL base and had a look for Humpty Dumpty. I had tried for this trad before but there was an ASLEF picket line here last time.🥴 I sat on the wall and pondered this one for a while until I spotted the terribly obvious but cunning cache. On the way back to the motor, I added the Queensway Tower Block to the morning's tally. 😀

I had to visit the run down estate covering the site of the old Kursaal Amusement Park next for another mystery, grandly named Kings of the Woodrange Estate. I spotted this one from the car and once I had completed the clerical duties, I headed off to Southchurck Park. The last time I was here, it was to watch Essex play Gloucestershire in a three dayer. I can't remember the result as it was only day one.🤔 I did a couple of circuits of the park hunting out some of metroboy2011's A Poem by ... series of trads. I found five but failed to find John Hartley.😀

I had a couple more caches to find on the way home so I sped off to another new estate, this time on the site of the old Ekco factory. From humble beginnings in a garden shed in 1922, Eric K. Cole went on to establish the factory on a former cabbage patch in 1930. What started as a radio manufacturing firm, grew to be an international brand, producing the must-have electronics and gadgets of the time.

1 Letterbox 1 Multi 2 Unknown 3 AdLab 11 Traditional

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