Spier's School

Today we were up at the Phoenix business park looking at cars and on the way home we decided to pick up a few caches.

First of all we took a drive up past Beith golf club to try to figure out a puzzle cache called Bigholm's Chilli ! View. We'd been trying to figure the puzzle out with only partial success - something to do with Chilli's and how to measure how hot they are. The cache description also suggests that you figure it out whilst at the given coordinates so after parking at the side of the road I jumped out and headed up the hill. At the top I reached a bench, on the top of a rocky hilltop. There was a great view here, but I couldn't see anything that might help me, so after discovering why this one is called Chilli View (it was freezing!) I headed back to the car.

Moving on we drove to Beith and the ground of the Old Spier's School. These are now a park with lot's of short trails and walks. Within the ground are a couple of traditional caches and the starting point for a multicache. We decided to leave the multi for another day so that left the other two. Unfortunately my phone was acting up so Mrs SC was on map duty and she failed to notice that there were two caches so we only went looking for one of them. This was a simple find and the kids did the honours.

Spier's School was opened in 1888 and taught both boys and girls. The school role grew from 140 to around 350 by the time that the local authorities took over administration of the school in 1937. The school remained in use until 1972 when it was replaced by the new a new school called Garnock Academy in Kilbirnie. The school and all the other buildings on the site were eventually demolished in 1984 after years of neglect and vandalism.

Across the road from the school grounds is another area of land. This was once where Marshalland Farmhouse use to be located. The "Marsh" in this name is actually a derivation of "March" and is shown on older maps as Marchland. This indicates that this was on a boundary between two estates. The farm buildings were demolished in the early 1960's. Today little remains aside from the stone gate posts which provide easy access. The cache itself is easy to find and like the one we found over in the school grounds was a decent sized container.

We decided that this would be a good place to release a TB which I was given for Christmas. So after a wee kiss from the girls Thomas the Turkey was placed in the cache to begin his journey.