Sheila checked
in at the last control point at Great Easton at around 2.20 am and will
set out shortly on the final leg - 30 miles through Essex to the
finishing line at Loughton.
Before she gets there, Sheila will be
cycling over Toot Hill, where there have been numerous sightings of The
Beast of Ongar, a black cat-like creature that has haunted this part of
Essex since the 1980s.
An investigation by experts on a BBC1 wildlife
series in 1998 concluded that the cat is probably a shy European lynx
with black colouring and its rights to remain in Essex, post-Brexit, are
therefore as yet unknown. According to the BBC, experts have estimated
there may be more than 100 wild cats - mainly leopards and pumas -
roaming the British countryside but although sightings of anomalous big
cats (“ABCs”) have snowballed since the 1980s, investigators are still
searching for irrefutable proof such as bodies (alive or dead) or
unambiguous photos or films.
According to The Guardian, the absence
of "proof" is odd because of the “huge scale of the phenomenon”. It is
estimated that up to 7,000 people a year see panther-like (black) or
puma-like (brown) ABCs at large in the UK and “more Britons have now
seen a big cat than have ever seen a pig”.
As she is cycling in the
dark down the A113 (where many of the sightings have occurred), Sheila
will be reassured that local police say that there have been no reported
sightings of The Beast since August 2015…
This is our final post.
We’re off to Loughton now and, although we shall do our best to bring
news from the Big Finish, the next time you see a Face Book post from
Sheila, it may even be from Sheila…
SHE DID IT!
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