2013-11-15 52 5

Location

Near the Hulshorsterzand on the Veluwe

Participants

Palmpje is definitely willing to go there.

Plans

Start multi stage geocache GC1D677 around 11:30 (at the designated parking spot). The hashpoint should be on the route.

Added after the expedition: My home graticule hashpoint was at Schiphol Airport. An exit off a main runway. Of course I could have booked a flight and back home but the probability of taxi-ing through this particular point is about 0.001% (or less!). This runway is mostly used for northbound tak-offs and southbound landings so a taxiway at the north end is hardly ever used. Therefore I decided to look at neighbouring graticules and 52, 5 looked very promising. OK, drive 100km to get this one (and do a cache or two).

Expedition

I arrived half an hour later than planned. Mostly because I completely lost my way driving to the starting point of the hike. I guess I should have exited the A28 motorway 1 exit later...

When I finally got there I started the geocache GC1D677 and at waypoint 4 (out of 10) I felt lost... This is not on a path in the forest and the listing clearly states to stay on the path. Well, this always happens to me. Luckily, I was only challenged by figuring out what was wrong with the single digit I had. So only 9 more options! After I decided on the best feasible one things went well... until I had to locate the geocache. It was near the monument shown in the pictures. During WWII an English bomber was shot down and it crashed about 1km from today's hashpoint. No hash collission for me today! Anyway after some trial and error I located the geocache and proceeded to find the far more interesting hashpoint. I was somewhat dismayed as there was extensive forestry work going on in the vicinity and not sure about being able to reach the hashpoint. In fact... the sign I saw marked the path to the hashpoint as being closed. However, if I had not accidentally ventured that way.... I would not have seen the sign! And the path was not marked as closed. So I walked the final 200m to the hashpoint.... that was situated in a poodle made by giant forestry machines. Put up a marker a few meters away as I did not want to leave a marker there (might be trespassing!)

Al in all, a great November forest walk. Nice temperature (10 degrees Celcius) and no wind. It felt so great that I did another multi-cache.