You can find posts about our 25 km from WTF adventures here
or visualize them on this map.
Remembrance Day 2021 fell on a Thursday and was a beautiful autumn day. Daughter Becky, granddaughter Lily decided to go for a walk and do a bit of geocaching. Unfortunately, Thursdays in the fall are hunting days at the Fingal Wildlife Management Area and so we couldn’t enter to find the 40+ caches we still need to find there.
Instead we returned to the Southwold Earthworks and walked around the site. Looking at my GPS as we returned to the car, I noticed a geocache to the north in the old Iona Cemetery. We decided to investigate.
It was worth the trip. Iona Cemetery is an old cemetery with most burials being in the 1850’s to 1900’s. Most of the gravestones have been moved to the north end of the cemetery. As with many cemeteries of this age, the short summaries of the people buried there makes for both interesting and sad reading. There were many early deaths but also a number of people who lived into their eighties and nineties.
Many gravestones featured hands shaking hands. This symbolism was very popular in the 19th century and represented the final farewell, often between a husband and a wife.
Unfortunately, many of the gravestones were carved in soft stone and the lettering is slowly wearing away.
There are many of these old cemeteries scattered throughout our 25 km search area. We will try to document more of them.
