2012-08-06 52 -3

Mon 6 Aug 2012 in 52,-3: 52.7405222, -3.9588775 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

Location

While most of the Mid Wales graticule lies far, far away from anything, this particular hashpoint sits on a low hill right by the river Mawddach. Sure, the hill's forested and may not have any paths in it - but that's no problem, right?

Participants

• Huinesoron
• Huinesoron's mother

Preparation

From Saturday 4th through Friday 10th August, I was staying a short distance south of this hashpoint (my journey there allowed me to hit my first ever hash on the Saturday), right on the border between two virgin graticules, so I had a prime opportunity for geohashing. Unfortunately, Aberystwyth graticule is mostly underwater... and Wales is very bad for internet access... so I had a total of three possible hashes: Saturday, Sunday, and (because we're east of 30W) Monday. Saturday and Sunday were too far. Monday... was just right.

Oh, but no internet means no GPS even on a phone - so this was a map job. I pulled the map off the shelf and... cursed, because the map grid of course isn't aligned to the lat/long grid. Fortunately there were graticule intersections marked, but it was still more work than I'd been expecting - and the forest was so small! Surely there had to be a larger-scale map.

There was. That one didn't have graticule-intersection marks. Cue some overly-complicated ruler work to pinpoint the hash (hey, it's been a decade since I last used a map this way, cut me some slack!). At least the second map showed some actual tracks... a tentative route was planned. Three routes, actually. Since the hashpoint itself was off-track, we could compass either from the end of a wall (blue option), a corner in the path (red), or along a contour (yellow).

But this is Geohashing. It was never going to be that simple...

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  Sums hurt my head

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  But this hurts more than the sums

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  Where we're going

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  How we (might) get there