by Tortuga » Fri Aug 08, 2008 4:03 pm
Hi,
We've found this one - we are new here; it has taken a few days to get our account registered.
After several failed (but close) attempts at finding a free ISIS, we were determined to succeed this time; we were within feet of the Dartmoor ISIS and the Ravenscourt Park one, and must have virtually kicked the Swinley Forest one. But this time we were not going to be defeated.
We were confident that the general location was right, based on the first two lines: "From this castle I can see pi. On a clear day I can see the Severn.". So it was somewhere not too far from the river Severn - I remembered seeing articles earlier this year about a crop circle which included a representation of pi to 10 decimal places. This turned out to be very close to Barbury Castle iron age hill fort, though the crop circle had since disappeared (it had been harvested on 20th July).
We were also pretty sure that "Find Erica..." referred to heather (based on the Latin name for heather), as it seemed likely that a hillfort would be a good place to find some heather.
So on Sunday 3rd August, we set off on a ~2 hour drive to Barbury Castle, in Wiltshire. We entered from the main Eastern entrance, and after a short distance round (anti-clockwise) we came to a relatively small patch of heather - which looked very promising! We continued a further 10 paces/yards/feet/degrees, looking for any likely stones to "peel", but without much success. We then completed a full circuit of the hill fort, looking for any other patches of heather - there were none! This seemed to convince us that we must be right, and searched again, to no avail. It was now raining, so we decided to leave, and find some lunch. We were in two minds whether to try again, or to head home, but decided on one final assault. This time we walked the full circuit again, and paid more attention to the information signs at the East and West entrances - we had previously read the one at the East side, but skipped the West one, assuming it was the same, but it wasn't - there was an important difference. This one mentioned Erica:
"In 1985 an unexpected discovery was made near Barbury Castle. During excavation of the Esso oil pipeline trench, the skeleton of an elderly woman, buried around AD 300, was found in a grave cut deep into the chalk bed-rock. She was probably a member of a local Romano-British community that farmed the area. The workmen who found the skeleton named it ERIC (Early Remains In Chalk). When told the remains were those of a woman, they renamed her ERICA!"
We used the location of the sign as the point from which we "go anti clockwise. Within ten, peel a stone". Sure enough, on re-joining the outer path round the hill fort, and within 10 paces, we came upon a stone in the path. By peeling back the grass growing round the edge of the stone, part of a small plastic bag was just visible, and inside it was the ISIS coin!
Just in case anyone else would get there after us, and before we were able to post our findings, we left a note inside the same small plastic bag, in the same location - saying this was where the ISIS had been.