2019-07-07 51 -1

From Geohashing

It began with a fateful message one morning: "Owl, have I mentioned that I've started geohashing again?"

Something stirs in the innermost part of my being. Something long forgotten and perhaps best left that way.

It had been a long time since I had followed the way of the hash. My trusty Garmin banished to a storage vault a continent away with the other relics of my former life. But in these enlightened times madness is just the twitch of a finger away. Without a conscious thought, I'd downloaded the Geohash Droid to my phone.

In the office on Saturday afternoon, the screen lights up.

Tomorrow's geohash point is within reach.

Sun 7 Jul 2019 in 51,-1:
51.7506291, -1.2108833
geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox


Expedition

Thus I, UnwiseOwl, find myself on a Sunday afternoon waiting in the sun for a purple bus to take me out to Headington, one of the surrounding suburbs of my adopted home of Oxford, half a world away from the rest of my geohashing exploits.

The hash point is just a stone's throw from the bus stop, so I bid farewell to my noble steed and proceed on foot to the hash location, conveniently positioned in the doorway of this friendly-looking home.

There's no answer when i knock, which is probably just as well, as my old geohashing banter is a little rusty these days, and what might have sounded acceptably twee from a teenager just out of school probably wouldn't have had the same effect from a sweaty red-faced fellow of my age. So I leave behind a token and a packet of sealed cookies as a token of goodwill from the internet at large and remember to snap a photograph over my shoulder as a head off on my merry way.

Since Tin-Tinn works nearby I dropped past before catching another bus home. She showed me a horse.

Aftermath

Oxford being Oxford, this popped up on the feed of a mutual friend. It seems that the people who I visited then passed on the cookies and cryptic note to a family member, who after being suitably confused managed to make it back to this page! Truly the internet is a magical place.

Achievements

Bus.PNG
UnwiseOwl earned the Public transport geohash achievement
by reaching the (51, -1) geohash on 2019-07-07 via the No. 4 bus.


Globetrotter6-101000.png
UnwiseOwl earned the Globetrotter achievement
by visiting hashpoints on 2 continents.