2008-11-17 51 4

Mon 17 Nov 2008 in 51,4: 51.0396173, 4.2444395 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

Participants

• Amras
• Chiropter

2008-11-17, N51.039617°; E4.244439°

Chiropter reporting

The start

Unaware of what today possibly could happen I went to the morning class. I just entered the auditorium and I noticed that Amras was quite excited about something. Once I was seated he asked me to check today's geohash. I did and there it was, a geohash pretty close to Antwerp and by the looks of it not really hard to reach. A good thing the lessons were over after midday. Still at the university we made some screenshots of the map (I was not planning to take my laptop on this kind of expeditions), we printed them and planned in less than 10 minutes what we would need. Off we went, but we had to stop at my home to get a GPS (for some reason I didn't take my camera, a good thing Amras had his), and after figuring out of how that thing worked we took off.

On our way

Since we're still students we almost got lost in like 30 minutes, but after some touring in the rural opens of Belgium (as we call it "Den Boeren buiten") we found our way and got to the point where we could leave the car and continue on foot. After a walk of 10 minutes I saw where the Hash should be, problem was: we had to go through the fields. But adventurous as we were we continued. First over a barbed wire fence through a corn field (good thing it was all mowed down), then under a barbed wire fence to enter a cowfield (or, as we noticed pretty soon, a minefield). Evading cowsh*t we continued through wet grass (as usual in Belgium it was humid weather). That was where I noticed my shoes weren't waterproof. But we couldn't turn back so close to the Hashpoint. We continued through the field and for some reason Amras thought the cows could be velociraptors in disguise. We just wanted the Velociraptor ribbon.

Arrival

Finally we arrived (after some more situations with mud and barbed wire) on the spot. But there the GPS was changing his opinion and send us circling a bit until he decided it was enough. There we ate our lunch, took some grinning pictures and quickly decided to go home, since we didn't expect anyone else to show up.
Amras wanted to leave marks, but I reminded him it was someone else's property. Besides, the velociraptor-cows might eat it.
On our way back we discovered that there was an easier way to get to the hash. But that was too late.

Epilogue

What we learned from it:

• When entering a field: look for (easier) entrances instead of climbing randomly over/under barbed wire,
• Cows may be velociraptors,
• Remember to take as much pictures as possible,
• In Belgium/The Netherlands the geohash is often in a field.

Photos

• 

  Chiropter looking on his laptop for the geohash, converting maps to .pdf so we can print them in the library

• 

  Last check

• 

  Amras driving

• 

  Chiropter navigating

• 

  Our GPSdevice pointing to the right spot

• 

  Chiropter located where the geohash should be

• 

  on position

• 

  Chiropter

• 

  Amras

• 

  Yay, picnick achievement, too bad it was such a bad weather

• 

  Amras picnicking

• 

  East view

• 

  South view

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  West view

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  North view

• 

  the geohash was centimetres from a pile of cowsh*t