2010-05-28 51 -1

Stopped by a thick wall of oil seed rape!

Location

Hursley, Hampshire, UK

(in a field ~~which looks quite easily accessible~~ which was not at all accessible)

Participants

Sermoa
Mapaholic
Durantelo

Plans

We are going late at night, from 11pm making it a Midnight Geohash. It's going to be full moon, so that should be very nice!

We'll hopefully get to the exact location. The field looks accessible enough, it's just going to be a matter of whether we encounter any No Trespassing signs (or the field turns out to be full of crops that we don't want to damage).

I'm looking forward to seeing a few of the excellent series of geocaches in and around Hursley. One of them might even qualify us for the Hash collision achievement!

Look at all the geocaches around this geohash!

Expedition

Very likely to be going after work tomorrow evening. Hopeful to find a few of the nearby geocaches too! -- sermoa 21:35, 27 May 2010 (GMT+01:00)

Okay so it's going to be a midnight geohash! That'll be fun! It's full moon tomorrow night and the field seems nice and open so we might make it without a torch, for bonus points! :) -- sermoa 23:33, 27 May 2010 (GMT+01:00)

Getting ready to go out. Charged batteries, charged phone, loaded some geocaches into my phone ...! -- sermoa 22:17, 28 May 2010 (GMT+01:00)

Made it to 220 metres from the geocache. The field is made of oil seed rape -- sermoa @51.0267,-1.3724 00:20, 29 May 2010 (GMT+01:00)

The geohash was in the middle of a field of oil seed rape but we got to about 200m away. Sadly Geohash Droid kept crashing so I couldn't update. -- sermoa 01:32, 29 May 2010 (GMT+01:00)

We had cake, listened to music and took photos which I'll put up tomorrow. We also found a geocache! Home now :) -- sermoa 01:34, 29 May 2010 (GMT+01:00)

Detailed Report

Amazingly enough, this was my first geohash expedition of the year, so i was very excited. I am lucky to have recently got to know Durantelo who lives near to me, is interested in geohashing and geocaching ... and has a car! So this was the ideal opportunity to go out on a midnight adventure!

We thought the field might be easily accessible, and i'm sure at some times of the year it is. Unfortunately right now it is made of oil seed rape, with no tractor tracks to get through. There was no way we could have entered the field, so we skirted our way around it trying to get as close as possible. My phone says 145 metres, but Durantelo's said 220 metres, which i think was much more realistic.

Despite not making it to the actual coordinates, we settled down at the edge of the field and had a really good time. The moon was perfectly full at exactly 00:07 and it looked very beautiful. We took photos, ate cake, Mapaholic played us some music on the iPod, and we even managed to watch a few youtube videos at the side of the field in the middle of the night! yay! :D

We then went to look for nearby geocache GC1MG2T - Hursley Circular #5. It took ages, but we found it in the end! :)

It was a really fun night - i loved it! And what's more, there's another good geohash today! 2010-05-29 51 -1 near Micheldever train station!

Photos

Getting ready to go! Actually I'm just testing the picture upload function of geohash droid!
It says 145m but unfortunately the GPS was not very accurate. We were more like 220m away.
The full moon rising over a geohash field of oil seed rape - beautiful! :)
The moon and the field
Durantelo and Sermoa
Mapaholic and Sermoa looking longingly towards the geohash in the distance
Mapaholic and Durantelo eating cake!
Monica and the google pin about as close as we could get to the geohash
So it's about 220m over there! There will be no walking through this field!
A rather non-descript tree behind us
The path we came up
Tweeting! Or possibly trying to update the wiki, or looking for nearby geocaches
Playing The Lying Down Game
A weird Thing we saw on our way back