2024-07-24 51 -0
| Wed 24 Jul 2024 in 51,-0: 51.8600000, -0.8109109 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox |
Location
An animal field in Weedon, near Aylesbury
Participants
Expedition
I had considered doing this as a walk, but woke up on the day nowhere near ready for 12 hours of walking. I changed the plan to using public transport, then busied myself for most of the morning with unrelated stuff, leaving with very little time to solidify my plans.
The only realistic option was to take a bus, but I don't know a good way of finding the best options by bus. I default to google maps, but it doesn't share my preference of taking a single bus with a substantial walk either side over taking 3 separate buses. It did manage to point me towards bus 100 as an option, and I found that taking it as far as Rowsham then following the Aylesbury Ring footpath to the hash to be a satisfactory plan.
Leaving home at 1:50, I followed google maps (along a mostly familiar route) to the bus stop, where I had time to double check that there was a return bus at the time I was expected to be back in Rowsham - and in fact, there was another bus an hour later just in case. On the bus, I had another look at the route from Rowsham to the hash, which still seemed fairly straightforward.
I followed the Aylesbury Ring from the bus stop out of the village, where it emerged into a cow field. There was a fairly obvious track running West-ish through it, which I followed. It lead me straight through the middle of a herd of cows (with calves), but thankfully they retreated as I passed through. Reaching the other side of the field, I headed through a gate into a crop field with no obvious path through it. Knowing that my destination was slightly North of me, I decided to head anticlockwise around the field.
In the middle of the North edge of the field, there was an opening into another field, this one with an obvious track through it. I followed it Northwards to another field where the track disappeared. Thinking I could see an opening on the West side of this field, I headed clockwise round it. I soon discovered that I had been deceived by a slight indentation in the edge of the field. Now figuring that I was almost certainly not on the footpath, but not sure which way it did go, I decided to carry on North. I knew there was a road somewhere North of me that lead most of the way to the hash, so that would be a good fallback incase the path I was meant to be on wasn't in this direction.
In the North-East corner, I found a locked gate which I hopped over to enter a field of long grass, with butterflies and rabbits and I think a deer. I circled this field, but the only legitimate exit to it was heading east into a field with cows, which seemed like a bad option for both direction and contents, and crossing through nettles and barbed wire fences into the neighbouring fields to the North or East, which also appeared to contain animals, with the target road not even in sight, didn't really appeal to me either. I decided to retrace my steps.
Upon reaching what I thought would be the field where I had gone wrong, I carried on anticlockwise around it, to find an opening in the Southern edge.
Tracklog
