Wow what a palava that was. I have had to have a little lie down. Agents are banned from facebook for the foreseeable future.

Let's get on with this Mission and see if we can find where this Geocache has been hidden. Did you get the codeword worth 2 points. If not nevermind, you can always come back later. Agents have been hard at work narrowing down where this cache could be hidden, we think it could be on a stretch of the old Wyrley and Essington Branch Canal, but its a long old canal so we need to narrow it down a bit more.

Great Wyrley was once a mining village, The Great Wyrley Colliery — with metalworking (such as for nails, agricultural implements and horseshoes) in outlying areas. This would have been served by the Wyrley and Essington canal which passes nearby to the South near Bloxwich, The canal was built to allow transport of coal from coal mines near Wyrley, Essington and New Invention to Wolverhampton and Walsall, but also carried limestone and other goods.

There was a section of the original mainline from Sneyd to Wyrley Bank, later considered a branch, was opened in 1798, some 2.2 miles (3.6 kilometres) long with five locks; this was extended towards Great Wyrley in 1799, but the extension was disused by 1829. It was reopened and extended to reach Great Wyrley and serve the mines there in 1857. When completed it was 3.5 miles (5.6 Kilometres) long, with major wharfs at Broad Lane, Landywood and Wyrley. This branch was abandoned in 1955, under the powers of the Act of Abandonment. You can however walk this canal from Bloxwich near Sneyd Reservoir up to Cheslyn Hay as its now Wyrley and Essington Local Nature Reserve, A corridor of wildlife, parts of the remains of the canal still exists in places.

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