2013-05-09 53 8

Location

Todays hash was located near the city of Bremen, on the shore of small Wümme river.

Participants

Plans

This was a perfect day and occurence to start geohashing in Bremen: holiday due to Ascension Day (in Germany this is also Fathers' Day), perfect weather, and a geohash within 12km from home in beautiful landscape. The bike was finally in perfect condition, so everything screamed to go on a cycle tour to the norther outskirts of the city. Other geohashers are rare in this region, but the arrival was planned for the usual meetup time of 16:00h anyway.

Expedition

With everything prepared (or so was hoped), I left home at around 15:00h and leisurely cycled through Bremen. There's a great route going through Bürgerpark and then through the extensive allotment areas to the north, then crossing the Blockland area and finally leading along the southern shore of Wümme river. This being Fathers' Day, Bürgerpark and the meadowy Blockland area was crowded with people enjoying the nice weather and a cold beer.

Reaching the point of the river where the geohash was located I found my worst fears confirmed: the spot was decidedly in the watery part of the shore, and what was supposed to be the non-watery part of the shore was actually a flooded swamp. Exploring the landscape or the map from all sides was interesting but not fruitful. Attempts to hire a boat at the nearby mooring were met with failure. It now turned out that preparation had missed critical pieces of equipment: towel (oh how could he!) and swimming trunks.

So, separated from the desired spot by several ten meters of river, I gave up on this geohash and returned, taking the cycleway through Gröpelingen and along Werdersee which turned this into a nice cycling trip all in all.