2025-02-21 52 4
| Fri 21 Feb 2025 in 52,4: 52.6729762, 4.8538182 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox |
Location
Along a canal in Heerhugowaard
Participants
Expedition
It was been a week of useless hashes and nothing to do about it. On Thursday when the hashes for Friday were updated this cute little hash was immediately interesting. Within city limits, in walking distance of a train station. Small difficulty in that the hash is about 90 minutes north of where I work, which is 90 minuts north of where I live. Plus the destination Heerhugowaard is not a big town, so there’s no good connection to get there.
I left work at 16:00, grabbing the train to Schiphol. Changed trains at Schiphol to go to Castricum. Had to change trains in Castricum to get to Heerhugowaard. To be fair to the Nederlandse Spoorwegen, the connections were all pretty quick, all the trains were on time and there were no delays or discomforts at all. Very nice to have happen, but very boring to write about.
I reached Heerhugowaard at around 18:00. There might have been a quick bus to the hash, but I decided to walk the 30 minutes instead. I don’t recall having ever been to Heerhugowaard before so I enjoyed just looking around. All in all it was a very “Northern Netherlands” type of town. More open spaces than in the south, but less friendly. It’s hard to explain and since I’m from the south, I might be slightly biased. The bits where I walked to get to the hash were pretty bare and simple. Not very pretty, not ugly, just rather boring maybe. Walking here in summer or by day might be a lot more interesting.
Getting close to the hash it seemed that I hash reached a better neighbourhood, with more shops, more trees and nicer houses. I walked past the shops and went into the residential area to get to the hash. The houses here were pretty nice, with a bit of water and a lot of grass. The hash was on the grass next to the water and was easy to grab. When I left the hash there was a pretty cat looking at me. I tried to pet it and take a picture, but the cat would allow neither.
On my way back I decided to take a bit more of a scenic route by walking to the city center. It was at least better than going the same way as I came into Heerhugowaard. I did not reach the historical center, but I did reach a shopping mall. At first, I didn’t really know how to get in, as the first door I got to seemed to be locked with no way to open it. Which was lucky, because when I walked on, there was a Friendly Local Game Store 50 meters down the block. I browsed a bit, but nothing really caught my fancy. Still nice to see.
A bit further on, I found a way into the mall (a door) and went in. I was greeted by a display of dinosaurs made out of a soft fabric with Jurassic Park-like music. I walked through the mall and found another display. This time it was a very soft sabretooth tiger. Pretty cute displays to be honest, but I didn’t take the time to find out why they were here, in a mall in Heerhugowaard. Continued on my way with a small sidequest now: to find a public bathroom. Luckily, there was a very clean, very roomy and most of all free bathroom to use.
Having relieved my most urgent sidequest, it was time to leave Heerhugowaard for now. After a bit of tricky navigating past some roadworks, I got back to the train station. After another long trip with multiple changes (Heerhugowaard – Amsterdam Sloterdijk – Schiphol – Rotterdam – Tilburg) I finally came home at about 22:00 to a very hungry cat.
