2013-08-04 51 -0

Location

Barely in the car park of the Hendon Diagnostic Centre, north west of London

Participants

OtherJack

Plans

Tube to Colindale or Hendon Central and then walk through the park or sidewalk. Let's say 4pm by default but earlier could work in a pinch, and later could work without any pinch at all. This would be my first ever hash outside North America... -- OtherJack (talk) 18:02, 2 August 2013 (EDT)

Expedition

Made it, an hour early at 3pm. Details to come when I have time

... and now I have time. After brunch with long-lost third cousins and the like near Regent's Park, I (and one of the cousins) headed for the Northern Line tube station. He was going a few stops home to Golders Green, it turned out, but I was going all the way out to Colindale. Why? Geohashing. What's that? Google it. (I have no idea if he did.)

In any case, the tube took me above ground through bricky, low English suburbs to Hendon Central, where I got out and walked along a modest high street lined on both sides with kebab/pizza shops, fried chicken places and the like. Felt a bit hungry but decided to get the hash first and eat on the way out. 10 minutes and a motorway/railroad bridge later, and I was in the designated parking lot. The Hendon Diagnostic Centre was clearly still in business, but not much was happening at the moment. I found a corner out of sight of the main road and got out the gps, which told me to walk...

... into those overgrown bushes separating the parking lot from the tube tracks. Really? Google showed it in the parking lot. I had jeans on but only a t-shirt on top. A repeat of last expedition was quite out of the question. But I was able to shimmy along the edge of the shrubbery and eventually get it within error. Photos ensued and that was it. Continent #2 down.

I decided to walk back to Colindale tube station rather than Hendon Central, just to see what was on the way. It was a very nice stroll down a residential lane and then through a park, but there were absolutely no businesses around the station, including restaurants. Drat. (I ended up eating mediocre cheap curry across Baker Street from Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson's flat back in London.)