2015-01-24 52 5

Sat 24 Jan 2015 in 52,5: 52.1617169, 5.2563983 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

Location

In a forest near Soest.

Participants

• CO2

Plans

I noticed the location wasn't too far, but I wasn't planning to go, as I had expected a long day of work and bad weather conditions.

Expedition

• Hah made it. This good enough for you Eupeodes? -- CO2 (talk) @52.1617,5.2565 11:28, 24 January 2015 (EST)

I made that hashdroid post when I arrived at the hash, 17:28 local time.

I was doing my Saturday job of delivering mail by bicycle. I have a rather large round, and because it was cold, snowy weather, I made sure I was dressed up warm. I got lucky, there was a less than average volume of mail, and I was done relatively early, around 16:40. I was thinking about attempting the hash. My mail round is in the village of Huis ter Heide, and my phone said the hash was slightly over 5 km away from there as the bird flies (a bit more using roads). In other words, my job had already brought me most of the way.

By that time the sun was starting with its slow winter sunset. I didn't feel cold and I wasn't particularly hungry or tired yet either. While there was still a centimeter or so of snow on the sidewalks, the roads had mostly been cleaned. A lot of snow had melted already. So, I decided conditions were good enough to go for it.

I let Google decide on a route to the hash and started following it. After bringing me through the village of Den Dolder, the route sent me across the N238 provincial road onto one of the terrains of Altrecht. Altrecht is an institution for mental healthcare, and in the forests around Utrecht, they have several publicly accessible areas with buildings for patients that need long-term care. This was no exception. Google sent me zig-zagging through Altrecht's tiny roads, until I found myself at an obstacle, 2 km away from my goal.

The suggested 'road' continued into the actual forest as a dirt path. I certainly couldn't take my bike there. And there were signs saying that it was prohibited to enter the forest after sunset. I know the probability of getting 'caught' is absolutely minimal, but the reason for that rule is that they don't want humans to annoy the wild nightlife with bright lights and all that. As a Geohasher, I feel one should respect nature, so I didn't want to break the rule. I didn't want to give up just yet, and the sun wasn't quite under yet, but I thought that path would be a bad idea.

I remembered seeing on the map yesterday that the hash was near a somewhat bigger path or road, and I was thinking it should be possible to reach that. However, for some reason, Google was showing all the tiny dirt footpaths as roads and wasn't much of a help. In my hurry to get to the hash before sunset, I couldn't get OSM to load on my phone either. I took a good look at the Google map, and plotted a course through straight, named roads, because I thought those were likely to be 'real'. I backtracked a bit to find the first one, which was indeed an asphalted bike route, that didn't seem to have the night prohibition.

I wasn't completely sure about that, though. And making matters worse, I discovered the cold and all the GPS shenanigans were draining my phone's battery real fast. So at this point I felt the last few kilometers were a true race against the clock. And I couldn't go very fast, because the forest routes were littered with half-melted slippery snow. I passed some heath fields, a lot of trees, what seemed to be the fence of some private estate, and even a few 'hills'. Uniquely for the Low Lands, I had to go over vertical distances of up to a massive 10 meters. Most of the country is flatter than that.

Anyway, I finally reached the hash. To get there I had to get off my bike and walk about 40 meters along a dirt path. I let hashdroid confirm my location and sent the above message. By then my phone was nearly dead. When I tried to take pictures, it decided to completely fail. So, to my annoyance, I have no photographic evidence today. Let me give my somewhat poetic description instead.

The hash was in the forest. There was not much snow left, but enough patches to make people think 'it definitely snowed here'. The very last rays of the sun came in through the pine trees, while the small sickle of the moon was winking at me from above.

I quickly got back to my bike. Luckily I had looked at the map to see how I could get back home. I rode back on the bike path, until I got to the railway. I did find out here that the asphalt paths were indeed free to enter day and night. At that point I just had to follow the road parallel to the railway back to Den Dolder, and from there follow the signs home for a well-deserved dinner.

By the way, the temperature was definitely just above zero. No Frozen Geohash achievement for me.