Location
Next to a water tank on an urbanization of Castell d'Aro, Catalonia.
Participants
SastRe.O
Plans
Oh yes, I can finally deflower this graticule. A land hash in this graticule is fairly uncommon, but not that unfathomable (different to 54,14 where I never got a chance...). But what is not that common, is for me to have time to go there if a land hash happens to fall there. This part of the coast is very touristic, really really touristic, but the train doesn't go there and I don't have a car. So it means taking a bus.
An idea was to take the train to the nearest station to this graticule and bike from there. There is actually this old train line which is now a bike trail, so it's flat. But that would have meant a few transfers in Barcelona with my bike and I wasn't feeling in the mood for that. So bus it was. The problem? It stopped one village over, so it meant I had to walk. Not that big of a deal.
Expedition
The bus took of at 11 from Barcelona, so first I had to go there. All went as planed. Had plenty of time to take the bus and it took me to Santa Cristina d'Aro. Now I had to walk to the next village. Of course, I planned something else to do there, and it happens that this bike trail is filled with geocaches, so those recurrent knots on the tracklog is me looking for them.
This fields were quite beutifull. There was this rapeseed field which reminded me to the ones I encountered in Germany not as spectacular but I thought it would be longer until I saw them again. Now I reached Castell d'Aro, where the coveted hash fell. I downloaded this circular track which visited some fountains hidden in the forest, and it was very convenient to approach the hash. At some point I only had to deviate for a few minutes and then I could go back and follow the rest of the track. It also was accompanied with some geocaches, not gonna lie :P
And it was veeeery sunny and getting hot.. Man man man, I don't want to earn lobster achievement again, and we are still on March. And the path had not that much shade. I think I ended up avoiding getting sunburned, we will see tomorrow.
After some climbing the mountain up I was finding myself to the deviation to approach the hash. I studied to area a little bit with satellite imagery, and it was quite as I was expecting it to be. It was behind some house, but already on the mountain, it what could be a shortcut between the two streets, next to some water tanks.
The dance was like a waltz, slow smooth steps to the side and the rGPS got a nice reading. Hash reached, graticule unlocked! :D It was 13:57, not yet 14 o'clock. Took some pictures as proof and enjoyed some shade under the Cork oaks.
Then I continued the track I had loaded on my rGPS. Discovered an iron-rich spring and found a quite place where I could eat my lunch.
After that, again in Castell d'Aro it was maybe 16:00 and the bus back to Barcelona was scheduled for 19:30. So I had 3 hours to kill. Found some caches on both villages, visited the castle and the churches took pictures. Amazingly I didn't get bored. What got me bored was waiting for the bus. It came 25 minutes late. I was starting to worry, I was reeeeeally not in the mood for some +100km Hitch-hiking, at 19:00 afternoon, since it was the last bus and there is no other connection. It was a big relief to see approach the bus. And the rest is history.
Tracklog
Photos
| Rapeseed fields bertween Santa Cristina and Castell d'Aro. |
| Former train station of Castell d'Aro. |
| Was this sign necessary? What's the story behind it? |
| The castell of Castell d'Aro. |
| Some cacti along the way, climbing the hill. |
| The rocks on the very right are called Roques del Sastre which is very fitting for me. |
| Approaching the hash from south-west. Water tanks on the right. |
| Location of the hash, under some cork oaks. |
| View to the south-west, from where I was coming. |
| Precise reading of the hash coordinates. |
| Iron-rich spring I found along the path. |
| Oak with its cork harvested. |
| And again in Castell d'Aro with all the work done. |
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Achievements
Other Geohashing Expeditions and Plans on This Day
Expeditions and Plans
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