2009-01-17 52 7

Plan

Arvid noticed this was in an area he didn't hash before. Just north of Bad Bentheim, in the woods. A very nice area.

The weather was hot, at 6°C. It was cloudy. And rainy. And cloudy. And windy. Anyway, I needed to get out and start training again! I expected the last bits of road to be unpaved, and had no idea if they would be publicly accessable.

Achievements

Arvid cycled 62.5km
Crossed a border.
A nice new collection of No Trespassing signs.

Expedition

Arvid's tracklog by bicycle.

At 14:45 I left home to get one of them saturday 4pm hashes again. About 25km cycling, and maybe some offroading in the end. I'll probably average around 25kph, so that leaves some space.

At 15:45 I found out my planned route wasn't existing anymore. Turn back, take the next turn. This one also had a sign "dead end". We'll see about that. It was asphalt mostly, at least until I found a closed railwaycrossing. Not really a problem for anyone on a bike, especially not on a recumbent. There was a box that said something like "press the button to let the bars go up" (translation needed). I didn't bother, looked carefully and crossed. The road was getting worse, but I was also getting close. Until a point where another sign was that stated "Wildschutzgebiet. Gesperrt mit behurdlicher genehmigung. --der Eigenturmer." Which I didn't really understand. I guessed it's something like "nature reserve, don't enter unless you have permission. --the owner". I looked around and doubted for a bit. It was 15:55 now. I was 1.44km away from the hash, but it was no straight line. I tried to plow through for 10m but it was useless from there on. That would mean a 2km walk. I didn't feel like walking 2km through the mud. I did plan to cycle on on the road closest to the hash though. I could see if I could get around and get to the hash from the other side. No 4pm hash, but at least I could say it was a successful hash. Lately my hashes have been quite unsuccessful, so I kind of wanted to keep up my pride and get to the hash.

So at 16:00 I returned, made some more pictures of the weird railwaycrossing at 16:05, and there was even a train! A dutch locomotive with the international wagons. This is the line Amsterdam-Berlin, so it's very possible it was one of those. Around 16:25 I was at the other end of the road where the hashpoint was closest to. The signs on the road just south of the road I wanted to take didn't look very promising. And indeed, it wasn't. The first sign is No Horses. I'm no horse! The second is "keep entrance free", well, not really of any concern either. "Wildschutzgebiet. Diese Weg darf nicht verlassen werden" is bad news though. "Nature reserve, not allowed to leave the road". The hashpoint is about 120m off the road. I have no idea what "Vorsicht Zecken" means.

About 50m further I noticed a couple of other signs. They said something about not allowed in there at all between 15.09 and 31.10. So september and october. No idea why. Anyway, it was really time to call this a No Trespassing hash by now. At 16:30 I went back, I didn't bother to get as close as possible to the hashpoint anymore. I took a different way home. At the some point I noticed signs saying "Gronau, Losser" for bikes. So I took those. The first kms were great nice asphalt. And then it became unpaved for about 5km. Which sucked because that meant I really needed to stay focused on the road, instead of the nice surroundings. And a bit later I noticed at a crossing with a big road I could also continue straight on... And the sign at that road said "Gemeente Losser". Hey! That means this is the border! No signs of that anywhere else. It was a bike-only crossing btw, just like on the way to the hash.

Just after 18:00 I arrived home again, tired and satisfied of the trip, although I didn't reach the hashpoint.

Railwaycrossing where you
call to get passed.
No trespassing.
Not very attractive to trespass anyway.
Sad geohasher.
Muddy road.
Ha, my bike will go under there no problem!
Oh. A train. A dutch locomotive in Germany.
More no trespassing
Bike and more no trespassing.
Tranzlate plz?
There are 2 of them.
And there was a bit of sunlight on the way back.


Sat 17 Jan 2009 in 52,7: 52.3238594, 7.1391970 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox