2024-07-24 51 -0

Wed 24 Jul 2024 in 51,-0: 51.8600000, -0.8109109 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

Location

An animal field in Weedon, near Aylesbury

Participants

PeterRoder

Expedition

I had considered doing this as a walk, but woke up on the day nowhere near ready for 12 hours of walking. I changed the plan to using public transport, then busied myself for most of the morning with unrelated stuff, leaving me with very little time to solidify my plans.

The only realistic option was to take a bus, but I don't know a good way of finding the best options by bus. I default to google maps, but it doesn't share my preference of taking a single bus with a substantial walk either side over taking 3 separate buses. It did manage to point me towards bus 100 as an option, and I found taking it as far as Rowsham then following the Aylesbury Ring footpath to the hash to be a satisfactory plan.

Leaving home at 1:50, I followed google maps (along a mostly familiar route) to the bus stop, where I had time to double check that there was a return bus at the time I was expected to be back in Rowsham - and in fact, there was another bus an hour later just in case. On the bus, I had another look at the route from Rowsham to the hash, which still seemed fairly straightforward.

To aid clarity, the fields I travelled through are being labelled with random letters.

Cow field

I followed the Aylesbury Ring from the bus stop out of the village, where it emerged into field B, a cow field. There was a fairly obvious track running west-ish through it, which I followed. It lead me straight through the middle of a herd of cows (with calves), but thankfully they retreated as I passed through. Reaching the other side of field B, I headed through a gate into a crop field, field H, with no obvious path through it. Knowing that my destination was slightly North of me, I decided to head anticlockwise around field H.

In the middle of the North edge of field H, there was an opening into field Y, which had an obvious track through it. I followed it northwards to field Q where the track disappeared. Thinking I could see an opening on the west side of field Q, I headed clockwise round it. I soon discovered that I had been deceived by a slight indentation in the edge of field Q. Now figuring that I was almost certainly not on the footpath, but not sure which way it did go, I decided to carry on north. I knew there was a road somewhere north of me that lead most of the way to the hash, so that would be a good fallback in case the path I was meant to be on wasn't in this direction.

In the northeast corner, I found a locked gate which I hopped over to enter field D, a field of long grass, with butterflies and rabbits and I think a deer. I circled field D, but the only legitimate exit to it was heading east into field I, containing cows, which seemed like a bad option for both direction and contents; and crossing through nettles and barbed wire fences into the neighbouring fields to the North or East, which also appeared to contain animals, with the target road not even in sight, didn't really appeal to me either. I decided to retrace my steps.

Upon reaching what I thought would be where I had gone wrong, field H, I carried on anticlockwise around it, to find an opening in the southern edge. This lead me into field K, where I stopped to have a look at an Ordnance Survey map (the footpath I wanted to be on wasn't on google maps). This let me confirm that I wanted to be going west and slightly south, so I headed west along the northern boundary of field K. The corner opened up into field N, which was in the direction I wanted to be going, so I thought there might be a possibility that I was back on the footpath.

Upon reaching the far side of field N and finding no exit, I re-consulted the maps, this time using a combination of Google maps satellite view and openstreetmap to figure out exactly where I was and where I should be going. I did indeed figure out where I was (but couldn't quite work out how I had gotten there), and was able to get a vague idea of where I should be headed.

See a footpath?

I thus returned to field K, which I circled anticlockwise, to find much less of an opening in the southern edge than I was expecting. I had another check of the map which suggested that the other possibility for where the footpath exited field K was in the southwest corner, which I had just walked passed and not seen anything. I trudged backed there and looked closer to discover that there was just about a footpath there, with a gate barely visible past the nettles and thorns.

I retreated to a nearby tree to acquire a stick and made my way through to field V. It took just one more check of the maps to confirm my route through field V, but after that the footpath was much more clearly signposted. I made it through 3-and-a-bit fields (partially on the run, because I was conscious that I had wasted a lot of time) before discovering that my go-pro was no longer in my pocket. I checked my bag in case I had absent-mindedly put it in there, but to no avail.

The last place I had used the go-pro had been in the corner of field K, so I carefully returned there, scanning the ground as I went, to eventually find it in field V, a few meters from where I had left field K.

I finally checked the time, and while I headed back out along field V I did some mental calculations about whether I could make it back in time for the bus. These were based on my estimate of the distance from looking at the Ordnance Survey map while at the bus stop, since the footpath wasn't on Google maps. I concluded that I could probably just about make it if I ran a little bit, then while returning my phone (=pocket-watch) to my pocket, I noticed that my debit card and driving license were missing.

Back along field V I went, thinking it was likely that they had fallen out in the same place as my go-pro. Upon reaching that spot, I could not see them, so headed back into field K, where I still didn't see them.

I decided that I didn't want to retrace my entire route, so (after moving all my remaining belongings from my pockets to my bag) I started running back towards the hash. The well-marked section of footpath lasted a while, but not forever, leading my to a stile which I had no hope of crossing, instead taking a small diversion through a nearby opening in the hedgerow, after which the footpath was meant to cross diagonally across the next field, field S. Not being able to make out such a footpath, I started to circle field S clockwise, but then decided I could just about make out a track that went in the direction the footpath should have been.

I followed this track to a farmyard (where the footpath clearly wasn't), and hopped a gate out onto the road. This road led me west (past where the footpath actually emerged) to field Z, which contained the hash.

I had been quite worried about field Z, since Bing maps satellite showed what appeared to be cows in the field, and there wasn't a public footpath through it, so the cows wouldn't be very used to humans. Thankfully, something went right for once in this expedition and it was just an empty grassy field. I quickly headed North through it to where the hash was.

Made it!

Me at the hash

View from the hash

At this point, I checked the time again, and determined that it was nowhere near possible for me to catch the bus. I asked Google maps to suggest an alternative, and it suggested the X6 to Buckingham followed by the X5 back to Milton Keynes. However, I knew (from having seen it go past when waiting for the 100 earlier) that the X6 also went to Milton Keynes. (And in fact, using the X6 in the first place would have made the whole expedition a lot easier). I started looking for timetables, then changed my mind on the basis that it was my only option, so I might as well just go there immediately, rather than risk missing it.

I headed west through Weedon to the most remote bus stop I've ever stepped foot on. On the way I saw a bus drive along the road I was headed towards. I thought it quite likely that I had just missed it and would have to wait another hour - after all, how many different buses come along this route?

Upon reaching the stop I then checked the timetable to discover that it had in fact been the X6 that drove past, but the next one was only half an hour later (despite all the other gaps between busses being an hour). When it did arrive, the driver confused me by not charging me since the card machine was out of order even though I was trying to pay by cash.

Once on the bus, my last decision was where to get off. The bus eventually reaches the center of MK where I had seen it earlier, but it heads in through the northwest, much closer to where I live. There were a few stops that were fairly close to home. Having had enough adventure for the day, I chose one that was a little further as the crow flies, but which I knew the route home from.

My memory of the route did not deceive me, and I was able to find my house, where I ordered a new driving license using the debit card I had lost (and thankfully memorized the details of), then cancelled the debit card and ordered a new one.

Achievements

PeterRoder achieved level 4 of the Minesweeper Geohash achievement by visiting coordinates in 52,0 and 4 of the surrounding graticules.

PeterRoder earned the Reverse Tron gratuitous ribbon by crossing his own path many, many times despite taking a completely different route for the return journey (51, -0) geohash on 2024-07-24.