2012-09-25 51 11

Location

On a field (really?) near Straussfurt, Thuringia.

Participants

Rincewind

Plans

Make it a double-midnight hash, that is, reach this one and then proceed to 51, 10 at midnight.

Expedition

That plan somehow got a bit unrealistic after my first attempt to reach the spot. I got off the main road and took a rural... well, tractor road. It had deep washouts, was slippery clay and wet grass, steep... After checking the watch and the soil, I came to the result that walking 1.8km was not an option in 20something minutes. After I stopped the car, though, there was no way going on. Turning was quite difficult, too, without getting off path and never getting on it again. The traction control had to be shut off as soon as I entered that path, anyway. Finally I had turned and tried getting downhill again without ripping the underside of the car by bad navigation around the washouts. I gathered a bit more preparation would have been helpful as to the closest way to the coordinates. Since I did not have that, I tried the next path.

That was an even worse version of the first, and so steep that I didn't get as far as some minutes before. Okay. Different approach.

Carefully turning again (going backways was simply not an option), I headed into the nearby village and took the first road uphill, which was a much better idea. This was actually, what I should have done in the first place, if I had remembered the map well enough. D'oh. That road led straight to the control station for the wind mills on the hill, between which the coordinates lay. Since I wanted to at least reach the hash point on the correct date, I ran the remaining 200m across the smooth, harvested field with five minutes or so left till midnight. Coordinates reached, wet from the light drizzle and from running in warm gear (I learned SOMETHING, alright), I returned to the car and promptly forgot the grin shot until I was in the car. And I certainly didn't have the nerve out in the rain. Not as I planned, but okay- hash one reached. :) A bit more adventure than I thought it would be, but that's probably just understandable if you sat in the car at the time...

This was number three in a row of four consecutive hashes. Check 51, 10 for details. :)

Photos

Driving towards the hash. Everything went as planned, yet.
So, eventually I did reach it.
A wind mill near the coordinates in dark and rain. It's not a bad shot, it's ART!