2010-10-11 52 0
| Mon 11 Oct 2010 in 52,0: 52.2675189, 0.4204779 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox |
Location
On the A14 near Newmarket. Specifically, in the middle lane heading east, just after the A142 junction north of Newmarket.
Participants
- Benjw intends to be there sometime around 8pm.
Plans
Benjw has an exam between 2 and 5pm, so daytime hashing is out, but he will go after the evening rush hour has died down -- at about 8ish. He'll be driving from Cambridge and can offer a lift if needed.
Expedition
I set out from home at 8:20pm, drove out of Cambridge and turned onto the A14 dual carriageway at the Milton/A10 junction. The hashpoint wasn't for nearly 20km so I settled back and tried to find a gap in the traffic that I could latch onto, to give myself a bit of leeway for passing over the hashpoint whatever lane it was in. The presence of more junctions spilling traffic onto the A14 nearer the hashpoint scuppered that, although there weren't too many other vehicles around anyway, so it probably didn't matter much.
Approaching the hashpoint with a kilometre to go, I moved into the middle lane, where Google said the hash would be, and tried to hold steady at 70mph, the legal speed limit on this road. The hashpoint itself turned out to be just where it was expected, and I timed things very well and snapped a photo just 7 metres away from the hashpoint itself -- not bad in a car moving at 31m/s!
I then took the first exit off the A14, onto the A11, and turned off after a short distance onto a local road, where I pulled over and checked the photo I'd just taken. It was a splendid photo, EXCEPT that my inane Garmin e-Trex had decided to flash up a box saying "arriving destination" right over the bit of the screen which showed the hash coordinates. Why on earth? I KNOW I'm approaching the coordinates, that's why the big numbers at the top of the screen have been counting down to zero for the last 20km. Stupid piece of junk.
So I don't really have proof for this one, except that it's clear from the aerial photos that it's more than accessible, and I have photos of the GPS at the minor road where I stopped, and then again going back past the hashpoint on the other carriageway. I hope that's enough.
I returned home the way I'd come, and arrived back about 50 minutes after I'd left.
Photos
Turning onto the A14. You can just about read "Newmarket A14" on the sign.
Joining the main carriageway from the sliproad.
At the hashpoint.
I stopped as soon as I safely could, to turn round.
Joining the A11 to turn round and go back home.
Passing the hashpoint in the other direction.
Achievements and Challenges
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Benjw earned the Land geohash achievement
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Benjw earned the Speed racer achievement
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... and, since I was more-or-less in Newmarket itself, and most definitely on the Newmarket Bypass, I issue the following challenge to geohashers in Derbyshire, Gloucestershire, Ireland, Serbia, Bulgaria, New Zealand, Queensland, Ontario, and New Hampshire:
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Benjw issued a challenge for the Tale of Two Hashes achievement
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