2022-01-25 52 0

Tue 25 Jan 2022 in 52,0: 52.0773553, 0.2396146 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

Location

A field between Linton and Great Chesterford

Participants

PeterRoder

Expedition

This wasn't a sensible idea. I had work I needed to do on Monday, and told myself I wasn't allowed to start planning the geohash until I'd finished the work. If I didn't finish the work in time, I wouldn't let myself go to this hash. What actually happened was that I finished the work, but without enough time spare to plan properly. I wanted to reach the hash before dark, so I left at about 13:00 with a vague image of the google maps recommended route in my head, and two waypoints in my gps: the hash itself, a a point I needed to turn right at in order to get there.

Fortunately, the majority of the route followed one road, so navigation wasn't too difficult for the first 3 hours. Unfortunately, my assumption that google maps would take me along a route suitable for pedestrians was wrong. The pavement disappeared after about an hour and a half, leaving me to walk on grassss/mud verges. I pressed on, because I didn't have an alternate route and nothing was hurting yet so there was no point quitting.

Clearly the start of a public footpath, even labelled as one, but no path visible beyond

I eventually reached the turn-off point, where I couldn't see the path that had seemed so pronounced in my hasty glance at it on google street view. I continued instead to an alternate route I remembered, which in contrast was easier to find in real life. Once I was off the road, everything was much more peaceful, but navigation was now a concern. At every junction, there were more options than I remembered, and there were more total juntions than I remembered. I ended up just taking whatever looked vaguely like a path (or at least an animal track) and went closest to the direction I wanted to go. This got me there at a reasonably high pace, and once on the correct field I walked along tractor tracks, getting to the hash itself while it was still light enough to see what I was walking on.

Me, trying to point a light and a tablet camera at my face at the same time

I quickly retreated and found what claimed to be a public bridleway. I followed it to a log under some tree cover, where I ate sausage sandwiches. By this point, it was mostly just my legs that were hurting, but also my shoulders slightly from carrying my bag. It was about 17:00, and dark, when I took a picture of myself then resumed my journey. Somehow, on my route back to the road, I managed to completely follow the planned route, until I got to where I hadn't been able to find the path from the road and went back the same way I came.

Some statistics from the expedition

I followed the same road back, but this time I at least had a better idea of which side of the road I should be on when. However, it was now dark, making the area with low overhanging trees even more annoying. My back and feet were now starting to hurt as well. I had plenty of time now to regret my decisions, but I knew that if I kept walking, I'd get back home eventually. As I was getting into Cambridge, benches started to make an appearance. I avoided letting myself be tempted, because I knew if I sat down I wouldn't get up for a long time, and I'd just delay getting home. I finally did reach home at about 21:00. This made my whole journey about 8 hours, slightly beating the google maps estimate that said 4:13 for the one-way route.

Tracklog

I actually started in the same place that I finished; the gps just took a while to find satellites.

Achievements

Peter earned the Walk geohash Achievement by reaching the (52, 0) geohash on 2022-01-25 on foot, travelling a distance of 41km.

This beat my previous record of 20km.