2024-08-09 52 -0

Location

This Geohash is in the hedge adjacent to the canal towpath near Foxton.

Participants

Hedgepig

Plans

Hedgepig will be heading here to see if the hashpoint is in the canal, in the hedge, or possibly even attainable ...

Expedition

A very pleasant half km wander along the towpath from a familiar (free) parking spot, the tension of wondering if the hash would be inaccessible without either jumping in the water or crashing into the hedge was added to by the worrying notice that the towpath was closed for maintenance after a specific bridge. My map doesn't show the bridge numbers ...

Toting a new (to me) camera and lens combo I was somewhat pleased to encounter a heron, which was doing a garden ornament impression on the path. Huge birds, wicked beaks, in the air they always make me think of pterodactyls. Got a few snaps before it flew off, and some blurry wonky snaps as it flew off. Hmm, these camera settings need further study ... Soon my GPS bleeped to announce the waypoint was close, happily 50m or so before the closed section. This also meant there were few other pedestrians around, just passing narrow boats, so there was no-one close enough to wonder why I was edging through a gap between tree trunk and shrubbery to get as close as possible to the point. Photographic evidence of proximity taken, hash marker (a pebble ) placed in the ivy about 1m up in the nearest tree, and I was done.

Photos of the general area and the closed section taken, I headed back and the heron (or possibly a different one) was back too, this time on the far side of the water. It stayed nonchalantly put, despite two boats chugging past it, thwarting my careful preparations for some great pictures of it taking off. The moment I gave up, put the camera down and began to walk away, the heron flew up. Typical.

Wicked looking beak

Photos

Worrying ...
heron on towpath
heron off
Yay!
Confirmed.
the colours match well
view from hash
50m on ...
same bird, other bank
will it fly ?


Fri 9 Aug 2024 in 52,-0: 52.4918039, -0.9879966 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox