2009-03-11 50 4

File:20090311504.jpg

Wed 11 Mar 2009 in 50,4: 50.0756037, 4.1407393 geohashing.info google osm bing/os kml crox

Participants

• relet

Plans

relet had to present a project in front of the European Commission in Brussels. Brussels is a virgin graticule. Hence, he was eagerly waiting for a day where he would have a) time b) energy and c) the hash within reach.

Expedition

(has happened, to be written up)

• Brussels at night (well, 6am)
• Goodbye, silent roads
• A private forest.

"You are in a private forest. Access: - subject to authorization - disallowed in time of hunts. Together, let's keep our forest clean and calm. Vehicles, Mountainbikes and Quads disallowed. Authorizations for horse riders available at..." I looked up the hunting times on google: apparently its forbidden to enter the forest Nov-Feb on weekends. The tourism board of the region did not exclude pedestrians from their hunting forests at other times though. I figured it was fine to enter. However, parking was also disallowed here.

• This way was barred, too: "Private property"
• This one actually allows passage to the parking place. It just says "Bringing fire or barbecues disallowed".
• The forest was amazing. Lush, green, and..
• wet.
• They had bunkers, too
• Did I mention the wetness?
• Paths trodden on by many horses, tend to get wet and muddy, too (That's why I did not stick much to the paths visible on the screenshots - literally)
• An old bridge
• Huntsmen are not cleansy people
• I met an actual road
• A slightly newer bridge
• And a different forest
• Hash point reached - and the path I took
• I left my card
• Stupid grin - check.
• The streets even have names
• I ended up at the other end of the second roadblock
• First hash in Brussels, Belgium graticule
• Qualifies as border geohash, as I had to cross the French border without having to be there anyway
• By the time I was back it was 10am.. I realized that I would not meet User:arvid in time. :(
  • That's because navigation system s*cked. It only knew the major roads and cities in Belgium and France.
  • It also tremendously underestimated the time I would need to reach any destination.
  • My other options were visual navigation on the openstreetmap or google satellite images. OSM has not exactly good coverage either
  • The French way of signposting directions is not very helpful either: I saw many small roadsigns indicating villages and towns sometimes closer and sometimes farther away. It took me a few detours until I found one pointing towards Trélon. The other oddity was a (perfectly logic) roundabout: The first exit said "Other directions". I had to circle it once to decide that I would not want to go in any of the signposted directions, but in the other direction.

Continued at: 2009-03-11 51 5

Tracklog

http://www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=146372