2015-05-28 51 -1

Location

Next to a hedge, in a field, in a place called Rousham Gap. Just two fields west of Old Man Leys Farm, OX5 3EW.

Participants

Plans

I get off work at 17:30, I checked geohash at about 15:00 for the first time in months and saw that today's was only 10 miles away! I'm going to drive to the nearby farm using my satnav, then see if it's possible to walk to the hash from there.

Expedition

Beginning at my office near Oxford, I drove towards the farm, but it being a 60mph road and the narrow path to the farm being hidden in a wildly overgrown grass verge, I missed the turnoff. I kept going north and found a place to turn round, then came back and got the turning on the second try.

I parked the car by the side of the road, made the mad dash across and set off west into the fields. I walked across open ground to the border of the field which the hash was in, and encountered a tall, thorny hedge. Clearly no way through there.

Following the hedge south, I quickly found that adjacent to the target field, there was a field of oilseed rape. I was able to get into this by stepping over a little knee-high fence (and getting my foot caught in it, a bit. Dignified it wasn't.)

Once in the oilseed rape field, I needed to find a way through a barrier of trees and cow parsley. This was thickly overgrown with some kind of creeper. While looking for the best spot to get through, I saw a deer! I thought the deer might have come through the trees, and tried to follow it, but no such luck - there were thick brambles in that spot. But I found a way through nearby.

Emerging from the trees, I checked my phone to see that I was in the correct field, then waded through the crops for about twenty feet to reach the hash.

I was using my Moto E phone to navigate, and I'm not sure how to get a GPS reading out of it, but you can see that the red Google Maps marker for 'where the hash is' and the blue one for 'where I am' are overlapping!