2025-02-15 52 8

Location

This Geohash is located in a forest in Westerhausen.

Participants

Expedition

Fippe

In the afternoon, I took the train via Osnabrück Central to Melle and walked the rest of the distance.

Gaboversta was waiting at the site of the Geohash. We had been chatting earlier and had planned to meet up here. After locating the coordinates a bit off-track and recording proof, we admired the view from a nearby lookout spot. We then hiked up to the peak of the Westerhausener Berg, which as it turns out is unmarked.

Afterwards, we walked to Westerhausen, took the train via Melle to Osnabrück Central. This weird route was caused by some of the direct trains being cancelled today. We boarded the same northbound train, with me leaving one station later at Osnabrück-Altstadt and Gaboversta presumably continuing towards Oldenburg.

It was really nice to meet and talk with you, Gaboversta!

Gaboversta

This day had (at least) two reachable points in store for me. After some chatting on discord it was clear that I'd be going for the one farther away from home, as this would allow me to finally meet up with Fippe, after multiple near misses.

During the train ride from Oldenburg to Osnabrück I checked the map again, and became less and less confident that the previously estimated ~15 minutes would be sufficient for walking from the Westerhausen train station to the geohash. Notifying Fippe over the air I learned that I was not the only one affected by train cancellations and we would both be late.

In Osnabrück I changed onto a regional express train which would carry me (and Fippe, as we later figured out) one station, to Melle, passing trough Westerhausen. This gave me the chance to visually scout the hillside and edge of the forest. In fact, I pretty much figured out the location from the moving train. In Melle I waited for quite a while on the only platform that was currently in service, with busy construction works going on right behind me. The slower regional train eventually showed up, carrying me back the way I came for three minutes or so.

Having arrived at Westerhausen, one of the first things I noticed was a vending machine advertising meat at the back. Walking around it revealed that it sold drinks, as per usual. Liar. The walk to the hash was mostly uneventful, apart from somewhat steep and very muddy paths threatening my cleanliness.

No Fippe could be seen when reaching the point, so I took some pictures, recorded my proof and ventured around a bit. Just when I wanted to capture the view from a nearby lookout point Fippe emerged from the woods. We shook hands, walked back to the spot, took some more pictures and revisited the outlook point. After a little detour near the peak of the mountain, we found ourselves at the train station of Westerhausen, taking a train to Melle once again. There we changed trains to go westwards.

During all this we chatted about previous geohashing experiences, license plate conventions and some other stuff, including the possibility of combining multiple tracks into one log.

The entire expedition (apart from the mud) was rather delightful, I am looking forward to meeting you again, Fippe!