Hook in Hampshire – Some unexpected sculptures

One of the good things about caching is finding the unexpected. Today was one of the days!

We planned to make this (hopefully) our last Winter’s Pavement walk as the puddles and mud seem to be easing in the local rural footpaths.

Hook (in Hampshire) has many caches within its town/village boundaries. Many are on pavements or the urban footpaths which criss-cross the different estates. We set out to find 10 caches, and being urban, all were relatively small (35 mm film containers or less).

What was unexpected was to find 2 really fantastic sculptures on our walk.

The first sculpture we came to was in a small woodland, a beautiful eagle some 12-15 feet high.

Sculpture 1 The Eagle

We were unable to find the cache near the eagle, which was disappointing. We visited the obvious Ground Zero (a ‘holey tree’) but there was no cache. Before we could look further we noticed we were being watched by 2 young children. We abandoned our search, and reading the logs about the cache we were looking in the wrong place ! Good job we abandoned our search before those little eyes became too inquisitive!

The second sculpture was a fascinating Plough made from scrap metal pieces.
The plough is a relic from Gower’s Foundry which was established in Hook by Andrew Gower in 1825.

Sculpture 2 – The Plough

The plough was assembled from a number of ploughs bought second hand by Gower’s – such items were referred to as “Bitzas” because they were made from “Bitza this and bitza that”!

We were very fortunate to be awarded a find here, as the cache was wedged within its location and we could get it out. We took lots of photos to prove we were there, and the Cache Owner permitted us the find. (We do intend to revisit this cache again and try to retrieve it properly!)

We did have one cache on our ‘MUST GET’ list as the Cache Owner was a work colleague of Mrs Hg137.

The “MUST GET” cache!

So 9 caches out of 10, 2 excellent sculptures and (fingers crossed) the last Pavement walk of a Very Wet Winter!