2024-07-21 55 -4

Location

In a field next to Bardowie Loch.

Participants

KerrMcF

Plans

KerrMcF

I plan to head here twice, on two separate journeys. The first, Expedition 1, will be carried out during my drive to my volunteering. I plan to drive from my house to a nearby street and walk to the point itself before walking back and driving to the charity shop. This should take less than an hour and will hopefully qualify for the new Speedrun achievement. The second, Expedition 2, will be an attempted Walk geohash from my house to the point and back. This should take a total of just over 2 hours and may involve me reaching the point at 4pm, although not on a Saturday.

Expeditions

KerrMcF, Expedition 1

After getting up and getting ready to go volunteering, I headed into the car at 10:52am and started driving towards the geohash point. I'd found a nearby road to pull over and stop in the day before, and when I drove up to the general location, I was able to find that quite well. There was a guy sitting in a car parked at the junction right at the end of the street, and I'm pretty sure he was police or something similar, monitoring the speed of cars on the road. I can't 100% confirm that this is the case, but he was still parked in the same place when I got back, and I could see that he was looking at the road directly in front of him instead of at anything in the car itself.

The walk to the entrance of the field was easy enough. At some points, the shrubbery separating me from the field covered my path, meaning I had to wait to be able to walk along the road for small portions, but there were essentially no issues. I reached the entrance to the field, which strangely was not a gate, but instead just an opening. Maybe this is typical for grass fields, and I've not realised, since the majority of my geohashing fields have been for animals, but it felt a little odd to be able to just wander in with no gate to climb.

I'd noticed whilst walking up to the entrance that the field was definitely being used for wheat, and the grass had reached a length at which it would have been illegal to trample, but there was a very convenient tractor path leading almost straight to the point which I was able to follow. I reached the point at 11:07am, took a few photos, and retraced my steps back to the car.

Next was a very simple drive to the charity shop, with my plan being to park in the car park opposite the shop. Normally, it costs money to park here, but it's free on Sundays (I believe due to the church ceremonies). Unfortunately, this can mean that some days it can get very busy and therefore full, quite quickly. Today was one of those days. I ended up having to drive to a nearby street that I park on when it's not a Sunday and leaving from there. I got out of the car at 11:30am, but still had to walk to the shop itself. I stepped into the doorway at 11:31am, which would be when the expedition officially ended, but another minute had passed by the time I got to the till to take a photo of the time for the Speedrun achievement proof. I'm going to count it as 10:52-11:31 rather than 11:32, but the time on the proof (which includes 7 seconds past the minute) will be slightly behind this.

KerrMcF, Expedition 2

I left volunteering later than I had planned, time flies when you're sorting DVDs and books, and ended up leaving for this expedition at around 4pm, which was an hour later than I had hoped. This expedition was going to be a walking expedition, so I expected to get back home at around 6pm, which didn't leave me with massive amounts of spare time. Despite this, if everything went as planned, the expedition should be a success (this is called foreshadowing).

Near the start of my walk, I passed by two children - maybe around the age of 14 - who were playing football. While they were playing, one of them said a phrase which is seemingly popular with children currently: "what the skibidi". The other child, almost like some kind of autopilot response, hit back with "what the sigma". This only served to remind me that I am indeed in my third decade of life now, and I'm no longer similar to those kids with their strange words. I have no idea what "skibidi rizz" or "fanum tax" are, but growing up I could certainly have told you that 9+10 equals 21 and what Daniel was back at it again with, regardless of if I understood where this knowledge came from or not. I guess this is just part of life. It certainly gave me something to write about during my walk, at least.

When I'd looked at my planned route before leaving, I noticed that I'd be passing by two "turfs" that I hadn't yet claimed. For those unaware, Turf is a game played across the world in which users will travel to zones and "claim" them in order to earn points and compete against each other. Basically, it's a game where you can claim your "home turf" simply by standing still for 30 seconds in certain places. The first of these turfs along my route was at Hillfoot Station, which I claimed without any difficulty. I then crossed over the road to attempt to claim the nearby second turf at Boclair House. As I got closer, I could see that the venue was being used for a wedding, something which happens fairly often. I didn't really want to walk into a random wedding, stand there for roughly 30 seconds, then walk out. That felt like it would have been somewhat inappropriate. Instead, I crossed back over the road and began walking up Boclair Road.

I'll be honest, I probably should've worn thicker socks. Due to the type of shoes I was wearing, my feet were aching slightly by the time I'd reached the top of Boclair Road, which was not even close to being halfway to the geohash. At least with the discomfort I felt during this walk, I would be sure to remember for next time (I can already see myself coming back here wondering how I forgot).

Just before I had left the house earlier, my mum had pointed out that this kind of road probably would not have a pavement the entire way (or "sidewalk", if you think a biscuit is something that goes with gravy, rather than tea), and due to the 60mph (97kph) speed limit, it would probably not be a good idea to walk along the road if it didn't. Well, it turns out she was right. The pavement does stop just before Bearsden itself does, and the road gets far too fast to just stroll along. However, I noticed that a pedestrian entrance to a golf course started right where the pavement ended. Bearing the appropriately placed warning sign in mind (see below), I started walking along the path before pulling out my phone to check the satellite imagery for a feasible path to take. It looked like there was one, but it would've taken far too long for the small detour that it would have provided, and there was a serious chance that I would encounter the same pavement problem later on in my route. Because of the large increase in total expedition time that this would cause to what I had thought would be a relatively easy Walk geohash, I decided to turn back and call Expedition 2 unsuccessful.

On the walk back home, I saw a cat walking only a few metres in front of me. I did the classic pspspsps to which it responded with a meow, but did not turn around and continued walking. I tried again, and this time, it stopped and looked at me before lying down and rolling around - a friendly cat! I pet this cat, who was quite happy to be receiving attention, before it suddenly spotted something behind me and stared for a couple of minutes. I couldn't see anything where it was looking, but it held its gaze, seemingly got bored, and walked up a nearby driveway. I got home not too long after this at 4:45pm, making this unsuccessful walking expedition a total of 50 minutes.