2012-04-14 55 -3

Location

In an area of scrubland, a few metres off a minor road near Douglas in the Scottish Borders.

Participants

Benjw, with Mrs Benjw who took the photos but was otherwise going to stay in the car.

Expedition

This is many miles from home (Cambridge) so we would not ordinarily have gone for this hash, but we were driving to Scotland up the M74 for a holiday today anyway, and this hashpoint was only a very short distance out of our way. Consequently, we didn't aim for a particular time, but just set off and drove.

After some breaks for shoe-shopping in Doncaster and food-shopping in Carlisle, this was the last of our stops en route, and it was a quick one. We came off the motorway at the appropriate junction and drove up the B-road that passed within 100 metres of the hash. As the GPS counted down the distance, we spotted the turning onto a track that provided a handy place to park with only a handful of metres to go to the point itself. What could go wrong?

As we pulled off the road, we saw what could go wrong. The track was gated, with warning signs plastered all over the place. Deep excavations, falling rocks, private property -- the works. We could pretty much see the hashpoint, but there was no way to actually get to it without trespassing. We got as close as 56.9 metres at the gate, took a photo of a grumpy geohasher to prove the failure, and set off again for the remainder of our holiday.

As we left we also took a picture of the thunder-clouds rolling in to the north -- a fine portent of the wet week ahead that we were aiming to spend walking.

Lesson learned: never ask "what could go wrong?".