2015-08-08 52 0

Sat 8 Aug 2015 in Cambridge, UK: 52.1767161, 0.2339145 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

Location

Just off a dirt road in Fulbourn, near Cambridge.

Participants

• Benjw
• Sourcerer + dog - ETA 16:00
• PaintedJaguar
• MrsPaintedJaguar

Plans

Ben has been here before and knows the road is accessible. The hashpoint may be just over a ditch into a field. Ben will cycle over from Kings Hedges to arrive at 4pm, and would love to meet other hashers.

PaintedJaguar and MrsPaintedJaguar will also aim for 4pm. The hashpoint is ideally located for us to pretty easily claim a Juggernaut achievement, with a number of different straight-ish-line routes possible from home to the hashpoint. It will also be PaintedJaguar's 16th expedition, allowing a new level the newly created two-to-the-n achievement to be claimed.

Expedition

Sourcerer

• Arrived. -- Sourcerer (talk) @52.1767,.2339 16:00, 8 August 2015 (GMT+01:00)

Sourcerer (Neil) arrived first, followed quickly by Ben and then the PaintedJaguars. There was the inevitable photo taking including one of circus juggling. Then some general chit chat and toffee - nice. Eventually we departed, heading home or in Sourcerer's case towards 2015-08-09 52 0. Neil spent a happy ten minutes picking burrs and hook grasses out of his socks and met an elderly gentleman who told a story of the naked man walking his dog. Apparently it made the national press. What a pity it was a few days ago. We could have got a drag-along geoflash achievement! It was nice to see everyone. We should do it again sometime.

Benjw

• Just got home -- four hours after I left, from an expedition to a hashpoint 10 km from home... Lovely afternoon; thanks, all. — Benjw  _{talk} 14:29, 8 August 2015 (EDT)

PaintedJaguar

Many months ago (possibly even last year), MrsPaintedJaguar had bought PaintedJaguar a second-hand bike in an attempt to persuade him to start cycling again. This had been used a few times, and then duly left at the bottom of the garden to gather rust. However, we decided that today was going to be the day that it would be used again, and the morning was spent applying copious amounts of WD40 to the chain in an attempt to try and get it to move again, followed by a small test cycle around the block to check that the brakes still worked, during which a mental note was made of which gears were still usable and which ones weren't.

Having established that the bike did still (just about) work, and that a bicycle geohash was going to be possible, we set about devising the route for the juggernaut achievement. The flexibility in choosing the start point allowed for a number of different options, including if we started as far south as the rules allow, we could have taken an almost exact straight line along Cherry Hinton Road, Fulbourn Road and Cambridge Road. However, we opted for a start point that allowed a slightly more interesting route, including going through the grounds of Cherry Hinton Hall and through the middle of Cherry Hinton itself. The only risk of failing the juggernaut would have been to take a wrong turn in the side-roads of Cherry Hinton, but it turned out that the route we'd chosen was actually an official cycle route to Fulbourn,and was surprisingly well signposted. (Actual juggernaut calculations: straight line distance = 5.68km, maximum allowed deviation = 284m, actual greatest deviation = 271m, ratio = 1:20.96!)

We made it the track adjacent to the hashpoint a few minutes after 4pm, and were surprised to find nobody else there. However, we soon heard mysterious voices coming from the other side of the hedge, which shouted through to us that there was a small gap in the trees a bit further up the track. We took the blind leap of faith that the voices probably belonged to Benjw and Sourcerer, and followed their instructions.

We were soon into the field containing the hashpoint, which was full of crops, but the edge was very overgrown with nettles and other vicious plants. Wearing shorts was definitely a mistake! We joined up with the others, including the Sourcerer's hashdog, who was clearly very bored of sitting with the humans at the edge of a field doing nothing, but continued to wait very patiently for the whole time we were there.

We produced some juggling clubs from our bag in order to provide some entertainment, but after a few minutes of talk and looking at the crops together, we decided that nothing else exciting was going to happen, and we all went our separate ways: Sourcerer to his car, and the other three of us to our bikes to start the cycle home. We passed Sourcerer and saw him talking to the elderly gentleman he mentioned in his write-up - we speculated as to whether the stange hobby of geohashing might be being explained, but didn't for one moment imagine that naked dog walking would be the topic of conversation!

Finally the three of us who were cycling decided to have a quick pint in the beer garden at the nearby Six Bells pub to celebrate our success (with apologies to Sourcerer for not thinking to suggest this before he left). This quickly turned into two pints ... and then three ... and before we knew it, it had gone 7pm. Although by now we'd have been quite happy to stay in the pub all night, we unfortunately had to leave in order to ensure getting home before dusk, since none of us had brought bike lights with us!

Tracklog

PaintedJaguar's tracklog is at http://www.wikiloc.com/wikiloc/view.do?id=10418965 (or see the photos below for a tracklog including juggernaut boundaries).

Photographic documentation

Sourcerer

• 

  Proof. @52.1767,.2339

• 

  Ben

• 

  Circus Achievement

• 

  Lyla the Hashdog

• 

  Ben with Mr and Mrs PaintedJaguar

• 

  Sourcerer's Google Earth Track

PaintedJaguar

• 

  Bicycles at field edge

• 

  PaintedJaguar's proof

• 

  View from hashpoint

• 

  Sourcerer and hashdog

• 

  Hammersmith the hashscot (and a knitted mouse without eyes)

• 

  Negotiating the field edge on the way home

• 

  PaintedJaguar's juggernaut achievement

Shiny ribbons earned

Sourcerer earned the Consecutive geohash achievement by reaching hash points on 5 consecutive days starting on 2015-08-04.

PaintedJaguar earned the Two to the N achievement by attempting to reach 24 hashpoints on 2015-08-08 52 0 and is promoted to Level 4 (Expeditions).

PaintedJaguar earned the xkcd Nullaturion achievement by attending 2 Saturday meetups.

PaintedJaguar earned the Bicycle geohash achievement by cycling 14.2km to and from the (52, 0) geohash on 2015-08-08.

PaintedJaguar earned the Circus Geohash Achievement by juggling clubs at the (52, 0) geohash on 2015-08-08.

PaintedJaguar earned the Juggernaut achievement by reaching a geohash in a straight line (with a deviation of barely 1:21) on 2015-08-08.

Expeditions and Plans

2015-08-08
Geelong, Australia	Benjamin Kaiser	Farm in Barrabool, only ~6km from my place (as the crow flies)
Frederick, Maryland	OfficeLinebacker	Made it! It's at Plum Gar Community Center in Gaithersburg, MD. -- OfficeLinebacker...
Minneapolis NW, Minnesota	Mcbaneg, JMuonio, Katja, Rebekah, Susanne, Jake, Isaac	Lawn of an apartment complex, Blaine, MN, USA
Cambridge, United Kingdom	Benjw, Sourcerer, PaintedJaguar, MrsPaintedJaguar	2) Just off a dirt road in Fulbourn, near Cambridge, UK.
Norwich, United Kingdom	Sourcerer	1) 35 metres from a house, probably in their garden, east of Helmingham, Su...

Update this list.

Sourcerer's Expedition Links

2015-08-08 52 1 - 2015-08-08 52 0 - 2015-08-09 52 0 - KML file download of Sourcerer's expeditions for use with Google Earth.