2012-10-14 51 -0

Location

Today's location is in a park in downtown London.

Planning

Going to attempt a midnight picnic public transit hash here. -Haberdasher 09:19, 13 October 2012 (EDT)
Aiming to reach the hashpoint at about 7pm, as part of a day trip to London. Attempting a double hash with the East London graticule - see 2012-10-14 51 0. -PaintedJaguar

Participants

Haberdasher
PaintedJaguar
MrsPaintedJaguar

Expedition

PaintedJaguar and MrsPaintedJaguar made it to the hashpoint at 6:30pm, after a failed hash in the morning and an afternoon in London.

We got to Chiswick Park tube station about an hour earlier than planned, and so decided to spend some time before 7pm (the time we said we'd arrive at the hash) by visiting Gunnersbury Triangle Nature Reserve - a small area of woodland with a short nature trail that is right outside the tube station and surrounded on all sides by train lines. It was a very pleasant way to spend 45 minutes or so - highly recommended if you're in the area (and probably even nicer if you don't go at dusk in Autumn, like we did!)

Having finished our sightseeing, we headed towards the hashpoint, which was easy to find, in a park outside a church, very close to a war memorial, and only 10-15 minutes walk from the tube station. As we got to within 20m or so of the hashpoint, we realised that the hashpoint was going to be right next to a bench upon which was sat an elderly gentlemen, who was not dressed in the nicest of clothes, and who was clearly enjoying whatever drink was in the bottle he was holding far too much for it to be water.

MrsPaintedJaguar suggested that we simply walk past the bench and then examine the GPS tracklog afterwards to see how close we got, but, after failing to reach a different hashpoint in the morning, I was not about to be thwarted at the last moment twice in one day, on my first ever geohasing expedition. I walked up to the bench, and then started to spend a long time staring at my GPS, trying to exactly locate the hashpoint by repeatedly moving round in small circles next to the bench whilst the GPS unhelpfully displayed what might as well have been a selection of random numbers indicating how many metres away I was.

Eventually, the gentleman drinking on the bench decided that we were clearly up to no good and that he didn't want to be associated with us, so he got up and staggered off, giving us a very strange look as he did so. I finally managed to get the GPS to say we were exactly over the hashpoint, and took a photo, before quickly taking some photos of the church and war memorial in the rapidly dimming light.

Before leaving, we made the letters "XKCD" out of dead twigs and placed this on the footpath a couple of metres from the hashpoint. It wasn't clear if Haberdasher was attempting to do the midnight at the start or end of the day, but if it was the end of the day then hopefully our XKCD-spelling-twigs were still there.

Haberdasher made it there at the end of the day, after taking a bus back from Paris and thus carting luggage around, but didn't see the XKCD twigs, sadly.

The hash itself was actually quite nice- getting there was no hassle at all, and I grabbed some cheap pizza from a nearby restaurant for the picnic hash. There was a bench nearby, so I ate there and waited around until midnight, picking up some litter along the way. (No proof of the litter-disposal, though, taking pictures of cigarette butts is a bit much.) However, the lighting was poor and my camera was dying, so pictures of the hashpoint itself are few and poor quality- hopefully PaintedJaguar got some better ones while it was light out!

Getting back to the flat was difficult, since it was after midnight on Sunday, so the Underground was starting to close down. I eventually just took a taxi back, which cost a pretty penny. Meant to make this one of my usual rambly stories, but I'm not really in the mood for it.