2016-06-26 51 0

Location

A bean field just over 1km south of Newport (Essex) train station.

Participants

Tongs/B
Jeff

Plans

We will take the 12:51 train from Cambridge to arrive Newport at 13:13. We'll walk south to the hashpoint, aiming to arrive about 13:40.

Expedition

This was my first drag-along expedition. Jeff was visiting me for the weekend, and we were thinking of somewhere nice to go for a walk on the Sunday. Walk to Grantchester, or Waterbeach maybe, or, hmm, it looks like there’s possibly a nice walk in Newport. Newport is the site at which the Harcamlow Way crosses itself, so there must be nice walks there. On the map, a narrow slice of woodland separated the railway line from nearby fields, containing the River Cam. Jeff was happy to join in too, though he didn’t really (yet) follow the idea of geohashing. Maybe, I thought, we could walk through a wood, by a river, and pop out in the field near the hashpoint. We only had to walk 1300m from the station. Great. We rushed for the train and started out on the 20 minute ride to that station.

Maybe the first lesson from this expedition is not to make these assumptions. The wood was too dense to walk through, the fields contained tall grass and were not connected to each other, and the Cam was just a stream. After walking through a few hundred metres of long grass, we rejoined the B1383, picked the spiky burrs from the grass out of our legs and socks, and walked directly into the field. It contained densely-sown bean plants, with vehicle tracks to walk along. Retracing our steps a couple of times and exploring the network of tracks, at 14:06, 26 minutes later than planned, we got to within 5 metres of the point. We chose not to go any further to prevent crop damage.

Our reward was promised by a huge sign pointing to the Fleur de Lys, but when we realised it was 1.6km away, we knew time was against us. Jeff needed to get back to Cambridge for a train back home, and we did the sensible thing and headed home. Apart from the local shop, Newport was closed, and a coronation chicken baguette and a couple of Scotch eggs would have to do.

The expedition was considered a success, particularly as this was our first one in the London East graticule. We resolved to leave more time for exploration in the future.