2014-01-18 46 11

Location

On the side of a country road west of Cles, Trento, Italy.

Participants

Plans

The algorithm has been somewhat biased towards the upper half of the graticule lately, so this has been the first reachable hash in quite a while.

I have already explored the Non Valley in two other occasions (going to Banco and Segno) so this expedition will be similar to the other two- that is, I will reach the valley through narrow-gauge railway FTM. I planned to leave Trento with the 15.04 train which was to arrive to Cles at 16.08. I assumed that 50 minutes were more than enough to do the trick, so I planned to come back to the city with a train leaving at 17.03.

I chose last minute to leave Trento at 3 p.m. rather than 2 p.m., mostly for timetable purposes- I had a family lunch and I had less time between trains to reach the hashpoint. This later proved to be a clever choice.

Expedition

Whew! I hadn't been geohashing for more than five months. There were several reasons for this, two of which were the main ones: I started university and my student bus pass expired. This means I don't have as much free time as I had during the summer (especially during exam sessions) and that I now have to pay for every mean of transportation outside the city bus network.

Anyways, today's location just couldn't be missed. First and foremost, I needed an afternoon getaway from studies; second, I was fairly sure I could reach the location without any problems- I'd have to step five meters into private apple fields at most; third, the Non Valley is fairly well served by public transport, hence I could pretty much leave whenever I wanted.

The weather has been pretty bad these past few days, so I wasn't exactly sure of what to expect. In Trento we only had rain, but I read on the local newspaper that things were far worse in the valleys, and that there had been significant snowfalls yesterday. I dressed accordingly and set off to the station. I paid to reach a geohash for the first time, and while the ticket was a bit more expensive than I expected, it was a reasonable price. Thankfully the bus to the station wasn't late and I didn't have to wait in line to get the ticket, because I was sort of tight on time, having less than ten minutes for the interchange.

The train trip to Cles was uneventful by all means. I knew the path to Dermulo fairly well, so I studied for most of the time, and only started to pay attention to the scenery during the last segment, which I don't happen to take very often. It wasn't snowing, but just raining lightly. However, there was a thick fog and the air was very humid. The train arrived on time and I set off to get to the hashpoint.

The roads in Cles were clean, but there still was a lot of snow on the sides. There were more people around than I expected, even with such unpleasant weather- after all, Cles is the biggest town of the valley and has a lot of facilities and shops smaller villages don't have. I thought I'd studied the itinerary well enough I didn't even bother to turn the GPS on... only to find myself lost after 10 minutes. Nothing serious though, as I checked on the GPS and realized where I went wrong- I had taken a left turn without specifying that there were two roads on the left and needless to say I took the wrong one. Anyways I only was some 200 meters off my track, so it only delayed my schedule of something like five minutes. The more I got closer to the hashpoint, the less people I met. When I exited the town and took the country road to the hashpoint, there was absolutely no one around. The place was completely silent, and it was beautiful. Finding the right spot wasn't difficult at all- it ended up being on the road rather than on its side, so I didn't even have to trespass (which wouldn't have been a problem anyways, as no one was around).

I then realized that I was a bit in a hurry to get back to the station, and while I didn't have to run, I tried to walk quickly as I wanted to avoid spending more time in Cles than necessary. I arrived to the station perfectly in time: as soon as I walked to the platform, the train came. The trip back to Trento was quiet as well, until that kind of company your parents would never want you to hang out with got on board and behaved loudly and stupidly until we reached our final destination. I missed the bus and had to wait for the next one- sadly, every train seemed to arrive a couple minutes before the bus left the station, so I knew I probably had to wait.

It was a great expedition overall, reminding me of how every adventure is different (eg. I don't think I've ever been hashing after sunset) and I was very glad to get back to geohashing! 2014 in Italy's most (or better, only) active graticule has just started!