Billy Twigger’s recovery

Following the reports of Billy Twigger’s recovery from his accident, the original Groundspeak thread that related to the original report (which was entitled Very sad news) has been closed, and replaced by one entitled Billy Twigger’s recovery to reflect the more positive aspects of the event.

I hope no one minds me quoting the first message in the new thread in its entirety, however I think it’s better than me re-wording it and maybe missing something important:

Billy Twigger was one of the first active cachers in Scotland. He has set caches all over Scotland, but more recently has concentrated on placing caches on the Isle of Bute, where his family has a house. These are some of the best caches in Scotland.

He played host when we held the Scootish Geocachers’ Weekend event on Bute in April 2004, and has been an active event attender ever since. Ewan achieved his 1000th cache on the top of the Empire State building in New York this summer.

After the death early this year of another much loved Scottish cacher, Bill of Team Ullium, Ewan (Billy Twigger’s real name) organised a remembrance event so that Bill’s wife, Angela, could be accompanied to the top of one of Bill’s favourite Munros – Schiehallion, in order to spread Bill’s ashes. It was also Angela’s first Munro. Unfortunately, shortly after his return from America, Ewan feel ill. Although he had returned to work, he wasn’t well enough to be able to attend his own event. Two days later, Ewan was placing a new cache on Bute near a cliff, and fell. He was seriously injured.

Ewan spent several months in intensive care, but he has recently been transferred to the spinal injuries unit at the Southern General Hospital in Glasgow. The outlook at the start appeared to be very bleak, but he has gradually made a recovery. The most recent news from his wife, Lorna, is that he will be wheechair bound, but has suffered no damage to his personality. Anyone who knows Ewan would describe him, as Allieballie once did as “possibly the nicest man I have ever met”. He is a soft-spoken man, who makes people immediately feel at ease, and he has a great sense of humour. Ewan has two grown sons, Fraser and Callum.

At the forthcoming Hogmanay Hang-Out event in Edinburgh on December 30th, any money raised through the raffle will be donated to the spinal injuries unit, which is his family’s chosen recipient. Crazy Druid is organising the raffle and will be glad of any items, especially geocaching-related ones. A good number of people have already donated various geocoins.

Ewan’s mobility problems have brought into focus the need to be conscious of being able to easily identify those caches which are suitable for wheelchair users, as I hope that he will want to continue with his hobby in the future.

I think the last line may be interesting. Although I’ve never got round to placing a cache, I was around when it started, and came to the conclusion that making them hard to get to was then one of the aims. I remember chasing one of the early ones placed in the hills above Callander, and decided that after driving into the middle of nowhere (on single-track and non-existent roads and tracks) and finding I was still hours away from the cache by foot, it was time to give up – I had better things to do.

To be fair, there were only a few dozen caches in Scotland at the time, and you don’t have to go so far to find one nowadays. Downside for me is that it’s now so common, there’s no real challenge (picking hard or easy ones seems to defeat the purpose too) so I only go hunting for ones in places that happen to be near where I am, if they’re interesting, and not made difficult or hard to find. That said, I’ve stood beside caches that just couldn’t be seen, and almost given up after spending ages searching within inches of them.

Fortunately, I was able to go find another pastime to exercise my GPS skills on, or I might still be chasing caches today.

As for the caches on Bute… well, I have to admit I’ve only caught about half of them. The puzzle/trail types have never attracted me, so I have to admit I’ve only logged the original, traditional style of cache.