Parking is readily available at The Apedale visitor centre until dusk.
The cache is a screw top container covered in tape and contains the usual log and a couple of pens plus a few swappable knick knacks.
This geocache is in the area where the Apedale canal originated! It is a couple of metres off the footpath near to large boulders of slag spoil.
Apedale canal was built in 1776, after Sir Nigel Gresley (the then owner of the Apedale Estate) and his son Nigel Bowyer-Gresley obtained permission to build it through an Act of Parliament in 1775. Unlike many Canals this was privately owned.
It ran from Sladderhilll colliery in Apedale, past the Iron works, across what is now the Holditch Industrial Estate, and then onto Newcastle. The Newcastle end of the canal terminated at Liverpool Road, North of Newcastle.
The coming of rail spelt the end for the Apedale Canal which closed to traffic in the 1850. Very little remains other than a few traces in Apedale, notably an embankment which carried the canal across the stream at the bottom of Apedale Valley can still be seen.
http://www.apedale.co.uk/index.php/features-canal
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