2025-03-12 51 5

Wed 12 Mar 2025 in 51,5: 51.3361212, 5.4501469 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

Location

On a quiet road south of the village of Valkenswaard

Participants

Expedition 1

• MyrtleGlacy

Expedition 2

• gigawalt

Expeditions

MyrtleGlacy

I’m trying to be a bit more active with grabbing hashes. This one looked pretty nice as is was on a road near Valkenswaard. So I grabbed a train to Eindhoven to go on an adventure. As I was waiting for my bus, I noticed two funny things.

• On the signage above the busses apparently it was unknown to the bus company where a certain bus was going, so we just had to look at the bus itself
• The bus going to Acht was number eight. Which, translated, means that bus number eight went to a town called Eight.

Anyways, I got on the right bus to Valkenswaard and started scrolling on my phone and looking at the hash. That’s when I noticed that this hash looked reeeaaaallly familiar. It was apparently very close to a canoe rental that my friends and me have been going to yearly for at least the last 13 years. It might be possible to grab a deja hash achievement for that. If you see the achievement below the expedition, you’ll know that I found proof.

I got off the bus in Valkenswaard and starting walking. It was about a 30 minute walk through a suburb and then past a few farms. I snapped a picture of the canoe rental (not included in the expedition) and went to the hash.

As I am pretty sure I’m going to get to go back to this hash somewhere in 2025, I decided to leave a small monument. I figured it would have to be very inconspicuous. I decided to grab two bricks and put some sticks in between them. Nobody would move two bricks besides a road right?

It appears that the monument was successful as Gigawalt was at the hash 15 minutes later and didn’t think anything about it. The monument is visible on one of the pictures. I didn’t know Gigawalt was going, otherwise I would have waited, obviously. Maybe next time.

gigawalt

After having been geocaching since 2002, I only recently came to know about a thing called 'geohashing'. I've been following the hashes for a few days, and today the stars were aligned: a day off, and the geohash location was not too far away.

I set off from where I live, to a point between my home and the geohash, namely a shop specialised in 1980s "stuff". There were handheld and computer games, board games, action figures, LEGO, and much much more. Very nice and I had a nice chat with owner Erik, who gave me his business card.

Then it was just a few kilometers further to today's location in N50E5. Although it was next to a rural road, I parked a bit further away and looked back at where the destination should be.

There it was, waiting for me, in all its glory. And, very accessible. After a short walk, I checked my app and I could see that at 14:15 local time, I became an official geohasher! I made a panorama picture from ground zero.

Walking back, I greeted a few people walking the opposite direction.

Photos

Expedition 1

• 

  Very useful, thanks

• 

  Eight going to Eight

• 

  Looks familiar

• 

  Somewhat boring suburb

• 

  Leaving Valkenswaard

• 

  Expedition success

• 

  Selfie time

• 

  Panorama of the location

• 

  The Hash and a monument

Expedition 2

Erix Collectibles business card

Parked

I made it!

Ground Zero panorama