Fairey Battle

In episode two of the podcast, we discussed a cache called Fairey Battle (GCMJKZ).  This is one of those geocache locations that has you saying "I lived around here all my life and never knew this was here".

It proved to be a great opportunity for family learning.  The kids could go back to school and participate in history lessons in a whole new way.

The geocache location is in the Watchwood plantation, near Calverton, in Nottingham.

A Fairey Battle is a single engined light bomber, built by the Fairey Aviation Company.  This was the plane three Polish airmen flew on a bombing raid in Calais, on the 13th October 1940.  On the way back from the raid, to their base at RAF Swinderby, the damaged aircraft crashed in Calverton.  The three airmen were killed instantly.

At the crash site is a memorial to the three airmen.

Memorial to F/O Jan Gebicki, Sgt Edward Morawa and Sgt Tadeusz Egierski

We went to find the cache on a Friday night, allowing the kids only enough time to get changed out of their school clothes (once they get settled there is no moving them).  Miss Watto, Ben Button, Doctor D and myself had a pleasant walk to GZ (I seem to recall Miss Watto discovering that her brand new boots weren't very water resistant).  When we arrived, we were very surprised by the memorial.  We had seen no mention of it on the cache site, nor had we seen any signage on our walk to it.

Doctor D and Ben Button standing in front of the memorial

This geocache location is a great reminder of why we love geocaching.  We all learned something new, the location was beautiful and there is always something exciting about a new discovery.