2024-08-04 55 -3

Location

In a field near Bonnybridge, presumably belonging to Bonnyhill Farm.

Participants

KerrMcF

Plans

KerrMcF

I was last in this area on a university archaeology trip, visiting Rough Castle Fort amongst other places. I'll be heading to the geohash after my volunteering earlier in the day, which I'll aim to leave at around 2:30pm. I'll drive to Bonnybridge and park on Bonnyside Road, which is where the coach picked us up after the trip (a lot of 'Bonny-' names here). The route to the geohash's field is along a path the entire way, so it should be relatively easy to get to. Just for fun, I'll also revisit the Roman Fort, which is part of the Antonine Wall.

Expedition

KerrMcF

I left at 3pm, a little later than I had planned. The drive to Bonnybridge took me past the location of my most recent geohash, which was a nice little reminder. After parking where I had planned, I started my walk.

I began by going to Rough Castle Fort, since it was on the pathway to the geohash itself. It's always interesting to visit sites from the past, especially if they look the same as they would've back then. The buildings at Rough Castle have not survived - unlike those at the Antonine Wall ruins closest to me - but the landscape itself is incredibly unique, with very clear ramparts and ditches. I'd recently come up with a new proposal idea, the Sightseeing achievement, in which geohashers recreate a photograph found on the Wikipedia page of a place close to the geohash. It encourages people to actually explore the nearby area and visit things that are considered worth seeing, which is a part of what geohashing is really about, as well as being a fun way to document any changes in the area. With this in mind, I decided to attempt to recreate a photo from the Rough Castle Fort Wikipedia page, which I think I did quite well at doing. I took some additional photos of the area as well before heading back towards the path to the geohash.

The path to the geohash went alongside a field with cows in it, which I took some photos of, before heading through a tunnel under a rail line and across a road directly into the farm. I was right in thinking that the field belonged to Bonnyhill Farm, and I found the sign by its entrance to be slightly amusing for music related reasons. I walked up the farm path to a gate which I climbed and took just a couple of steps to get to the geohash. I took some photos and the necessary proof before walking through the field back to the road on the other side. The rest of the walk was just the same path back to the car.

The drive home was also quite simple, mostly along the M80 before turning through Lenzie and back past my previous geohash. When I turned off of the M80, the car directly in front of me did the same. I remember joking to myself at the time that it looked like I'd just decided to follow them, as I had indicated almost immediately after they had. Then they turned off of the same exit of the roundabout as me. Then the same at the next roundabout. And the next after that. I was directly behind this car for 17km straight (so about 23 minutes), the entirety of which was spent wondering how long this would go on for. Turns out they lived on the street adjacent to mine, and they were in front of me up until the moment I turned into my driveway.