2024-11-22 53 -8

Location

Field East of Abbey.

Participants

Dan Q
his mum

Plans

When my mother proposed that we take a holiday together somewhere, and that I could choose the destination, I started by looking at the Geohashing Expeditions Map.

Where, I wondered, could I find a cluster of mostly-land graticules (“square” degree of latitude and longitude) in which nobody had ever logged a successful expedition? I’ve been geohashing for ten years now and I’ve never yet scored a “Graticule Unlocked” achievement for being the first to reach any hashpoint in a given graticule.

So this week, we're holidaying on the West coast of Ireland, doing a variety of activities that take our fancy and, hopefully, finding a geohashpoint or two in previously-unexplored graticules!

Looking at the nearby hashpoints, we decided that this was our best bet. An hour and a half's drive from our accomodation to a village near the hashpoint and we might be able to make the rest of the way on foot.

Expedition

My mother's never been hashing before, but unlike most people I've told about the hobby she didn't turn her nose up at the idea so she was happy to accompany me on this unusual adventure. We drove to Abbey, which turns out to be a delightful village, and parked outside the community centre (where my mother was able to use the bathroom). Then we switched to foot, walking along the banks of the stream and following the road to the East, towards the field where we'd hoped to find the hashpoint.

A quick survey around the outskirts of the area suggested that it was, indeed, in what had once been an active pasture but had been abandoned and disused for many years. The grass and brambles grew high and were caked in snow, but we hopped the gate and pressed on for the final hundred metres. We made the right choice: the hashpoint was just barely inside the disused old field, and we were able to get to it with only slightly wet feet and without disturbance (except for some kind of nesting bird that was unhappy to see us, and some kind of medium-sized mammal - possibly a fox - that ran away as we approached).

We reached the hashpoint at 11:24. Flushed with success at this relatively easy victory, we continued our walk to a nearby dairy to see if they'd sell us some cheese (their farm shop was shut), and then crossed the river and climbed the nearby hill to the fantastic geocache at Pallas Castle. Circling around from the hilltop to return to the car, we drove back home, completing our expedition (hashpoint, cache, and all) in a little under 7 hours.