2009-01-26 52 0

Benjw's shiny new GPS arrived at the weekend and he has been itching to try it out. An after-work geohashing expedition on Monday afternoon seemed the ideal opportunity.

This expedition was part of a multihash by Benjw. For the other parts, see:
	2009-01-26 52 0		2009-01-26 52 -0

The expedition

I was glad that there wasn't much to do at work today, so I finished extra-early -- 1pm -- and headed north. I'd hoped this expedition would be possible, so I'd already packed the car with things I needed... new GPS, spare jumper, printed maps, packed lunch...

It was cold but sunny when I set off from Histon, just north of Cambridge, but by the time I got within sight of Ely Cathedral about 20 minutes later it had clouded over. It had rained rather a lot over the weekend but fortunately that held off today and the expedition was dry, albeit rather squelchy underfoot. Still, I was quite surprised to see several lakes on the way which weren't on my map! This also afforded the opportunity of a photo of a rather splendid roadsign -- "Think, don't sink".

From looking on Google maps, I knew that today's hashpoint was in a field near the village of Lakesend, just east of March in Cambridgeshire, and about 22 miles north of where I started from. The nearby farm buildings were spotted from quite some distance away -- this part of England is flat -- but there were a couple of tractors with trailerloads of sugar beet on the track, so I parked up (very nearly getting the car stuck in the mud in the process) and waited for them to finish their manoeuvres. When they'd gone I snuck back: at the end of the track there was just a sign with the farm name on it, nothing saying "keep out", so I was hopeful for this hash.

There was a friendly chap at work in one of the buildings near the hashpoint, who was listening to the radio and making something out of pieces of metal. As this was only the second hash I'd been on, I wasn't sure how well asking permission would go. "Sorry if this sounds odd," I said, "but can I go and stand in your field?" He readily agreed, especially as it meant I might scare some of the pigeons away for a bit.

I picked my way through the less-sticky bits of mud until the figures on the GPS hovered somewhere around zero. I don't think they actually got there, but I did get it to within a foot at one point, which, seeing as the GPS is supposed to be accurate only to within ten feet, I took to mean "close enough". I tried to photograph the GPS but I don't think I've quite got the hang of that yet.

I gazed around for a bit, but in all four directions there seemed to be lots of grey clouds, fields and mud, so the excitement quickly paled and I went back to the car to scrape some of the Fenland ooze off my boots. My second hash complete!

As it was still early in the afternoon, I decided to try to find a couple of nearby geocaches, then go west a graticule to try to score a double geohash. As we're right next to the prime meridian here, this only involved about a 20-mile trip over to Peterborough. The expedition continues...