2011-02-16 52 5

Location

Somewhere near Loosdrecht. Lots of water there, but the hash appears to be on dry land.

Participants

Plans

Well, Mr. Freeze told CO2: "You're going hashing or I will destroy you." So that's the story. I guess I'm going hashing tomorrow. - CO2

Expedition

Report by Freeze_XJ (mostly).

After deciding to cycle there, we packed a map, a decent screenshot of the place (still no GPS), and went for it... The weather decided to help us, so we had a lot of sunshine, and only a few clouds, no wind to speak of, and about 10 degrees Celcius... Cycling to the hash was easy enough...

You call this EASY? There were upward slopes with more than 10 meters of height difference. I call that a mountain route! - CO2

...and after a short break at the heath fields south of Hilversum, we arrived at the track leading us straight towards the hashpoint, slightly north of Oud Loosdrecht (translation might be something like Old Lostright, still thinking about a proper translation for something totally untranslatable). However, no cycling was allowed there, so we went on by foot, walking over an increasingly grassy path, past warnings of quicksand, nature and other dangers.

The hash itself was slightly off the path, in a particularly wet area, but we did manage to keep our feet dry. The way back involved nothing more than backtracking our way to our bikes, mounting them, and going south... Hmmm, or so we thought. The problem with relying on those nice pre-cooked bicycle sign routes is that once you miss 1 checkpoint, you can keep going on for miles before you realize something is wrong. We only found out that there was an issue when we entered Boomhoek (Treehook, if you translate it, and no, it does not walk). From there, our best option was simply going on, through several very small villages, until we reached a known road in Groenekan (Green Can, if you wish). The full trip took slightly over 4 hours, after which we both went home for a solid dinner.

Photos

The Hilversum Heath, doggone important :P
Some more of that
It's a kitty! We found on the way there.
Local swan with companions
This is what's left of the last people that tried...
Sign telling us we're in the right area
Wet land.
The actual hashpoint... in the reeds
Standing on the hashpoint
A crocus attracting attention


Wed 16 Feb 2011 in 52,5: 52.2158268, 5.0904454 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox