2013-08-05 52 0

Location

The front lawn of Cambridge University's Faculty of Education, on Hills Road in south Cambridge.

Participants

Plans

Ben will aim to be there at the canonical meetup time of 4pm, although is happy to make it earlier or later if other hashers would like to meet up. It's about three miles from home, so Ben will walk or cycle, depending on what the weather's doing.

PaintedJaguar is likely to be busy on Monday, so will attempt this hashpoint on Sunday night (aiming for midnight), to be certain of finding the time to reach it. It's even closer to his home than it is Benjw's home, but, at just over 1km, is too far for a Couch Potato Honourable Mention. Doing it in the night continues the theme of the previous two days' expeditions (2013-08-03 52 0 and 2013-08-04 52 0), and hopefully allows for a midnight hash, which wasn't achieved on either of those.

Expedition

PaintedJaguar

This expedition looked so easy on paper, even with the added complication of doing it at midnight, that PaintedJaguar decided to complicate matters even further at the last minute by aiming for a Tron achievement as well.

However, this really didn't make it any harder. He was able to walk from home to the hashpoint, leave a marker (on the pavement adjacent to the lawn containing the hashpoint), hang around for 10 minutes waiting for midnight, and walk home via a different route, all in under an hour, and without having to check a map or his GPS for directions at all during the expedition. Therefore he's going to claim the 'easy geohash' award.

This was also his third consecutive day of geohashing, after 2013-08-03 51 -0, 2013-08-03 52 0 and 2013-08-04 52 0.

Benjw

I spent the morning at work, then came home and did various things around the house during the afternoon. This included listening to the cricket on the radio, although as it was rained off just after lunch, there wasn't much action. About 3:40 I looked at the clock and realised that I'd planned to be at the geohash fairly soon. Apathy won out, though, and I resolved to visit the geohash at about 5:30 instead, which would mean I could cycle back into town and meet MrsBenjw off her bus from work. Accordingly, I planned to leave the house at about 5pm, and got the bike ready in preparation.

At 4:45pm it began to rain. Curses. It seemed to be a light-ish drizzle, though, so I set off anyway, at 5:05. I'd planned two separate routes to and from the hashpoint, aiming for the Tron achievement, so I started by cycling northeast, away from the hashpoint, then curving round to the right and heading approximately south through Chesterton to the Elizabeth Way bridge (which crosses the river). Now, bridges over rivers are known for having absolutely no shelter on them, so bang on cue the rain turned torrential as soon as I set ~~foot~~ wheel on the bridge. Cursing hard and wiping water from my eyes, I crossed the main road on the other side and continued south along residential streets.

By the time I was nearly at the hashpoint, I could barely see. I was now having to cycle by looking over the top of my glasses, rather than through them -- despite being rather short-sighted, this was an improvement. I stopped briefly outside work to check how far it was from the hashpoint (575 metres, qualifying for the cubicle geohash honorary mention), and continued on ...

... and the rain stopped, as if by magic. Not that the sun came out or anything, but it was better than nothing. I crossed one last main road, pulled into the university's Faculty of Education, and walked across the front lawn to the hashpoint. With the clouds and tree-cover, the GPS was wandering a bit, but I made it well within three-metre accuracy, and took some photos. It's hard to see from these exactly how wet I was, but I was pretty soaked. My T-shirt was even wet, and I'd had a waterproof on over the top of that. Never mind, it wasn't far back home again. I set off again, by the direct route into the town centre (most of the traffic by now was coming out of town) and stopped at the bus station to wait for MrsBenjw. Lots of other people were waiting, too -- hopefully not all for the same bus.

I'd deliberately chosen the outward journey to keep MrsBenjw's usual cycling route home available for the return journey, and we proceeded as normal. It started raining again about halfway, and was once more quite torrential by the time we got home. Every item of clothing I was wearing was wet, and I even managed to wring out nearly half a pint of water from my socks!

Photographic documentation

PaintedJaguar

XKCD marker pointing to the lawn containing the hashpoint, and Hammersmith the Hashscot. I guess the marker had been washed away by the rain by the time Benjw arrived?
The hashpoint was on the lawn behind the sign
The Faculty of Education
At the hashpoint, at midnight

Benjw

GPS proof of hash
A rather wet Benjw at the hashpoint
Twenty minutes of heavy rain makes you look like this
I came in from the south ...
... past the Faculty of Education ...
... and I'm leaving to the north
Lots of people waiting at the bus station
Wringing the water out of my socks

Tracklog

PaintedJaguar's tracklog (from one end of his road, to the hashpoint, and back to the other end) is at http://en.wikiloc.com/wikiloc/view.do?id=5002133

Benjw's route is shown on this map.