2025-02-01 53 8

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Location

Within the lower Saxon forest Schippstroth

Participants

Expedition

Beardygrade and I had planned to attend a relative's birthday in Ostfriesland for a while. The initial plan was to take a train from Oldenburg to Augustfehn, followed by some northbound cycling. Once the coordinates for this first of February were announced I messaged Beardygrade and claimed that geohashing seemed incompatible with these plans. A number of routes that would include a geohash were discussed, with us settling for the only realistic one: Embarking early, hashing north of our home and then cycling westwards, with the return home to be decided on the spot. It was declared that instead of planning every little detail, this should be considered an "adventure". I'll let you be the judge of whether this succeeded.

At roughly quarter past twelve, two geohashers mounted their bicycles and set off into thick fog. Most of the route towards the hash point was already known, but involved crossing rural roads on multiple occasions. The fog made this somewhat scary, approaching cars could only be seen when they were really quite close, and hearing wasn't much better.

These conditions made even the generally uninspiring "landscape" to Oldenburg's north west exciting: One moment, all you see is neatly arranged trees in their early years, a moment later you find yourself right next to a bio gas production facility. Suddenly, a small village surrounds you, which is then swiftly replaced by a forest. Each of these transitions are completely unannounced, once you can see what's next, you are there already.

Said forest was home to the geohash. Beardygrade took the helm and led us onto paths of ever increasing precariousness. Stopped on a bridge, we consulted our phones. 150 meters away, it said, and the map indicated a sharp right turn. Back on the bikes we encountered a right turn, but later and less sharp than expected. The path the hash was situated on was barely that, hiding from us on our first pass. Clearly it had been used a while back and no one cared to maintain it since.

With our bikes parked at the intersection, we set out on foot, relying on fallen trees and dense greenery to avoid sinking into the comically muddy floor. Progress was slow, as slipping would have meant dozens of kilometers and a social gathering in wet, muddy clothes.

Upon reaching a particularly large group of fallen trees, Beardygrade informed me of the remaining distance: "Five meters to go!" "Ah, just one horizon away!", I slightly exaggerated.

This collection of deadwood turned out to be the home of the geohash, prompting us to carefully climb it, whilst checking the distance. The GPS was not too content with the fog either, as the readings kept fluctuating. The highest log was declared the geohash, mostly because it wasn't soggy. With the stupid grin captured, we headed back to the bicycles and out of the forest, the fog still being as dense as it had been when we first embarked.

The time we wanted to arrive at was quickly approaching, so we powered through, only allowing ourselves to get confused about our location within the city of Westerstede two times. After snacking on one of Beardygrade's pretzels in the village of Ihorst, we made for a final sprint, just barely slowing down to inspect directional signs, which by now showed our destination. We made it just on time.

Upon entering the mess hall it quickly dawned on me that this would take quite a while. One end had a bunch of cakes lined up, on the other, implements for a buffet had been brought out. One of the cakes, which both of us naively took a piece of, was a local specialty, stuffed with raisins, which tasted like they were made from concentrated rum. Quite the experience.

Those members of the gathering who'd occasionally pop outside to supply fresh carcinogens to their lungs informed everyone else of the continuously thickening fog. Even so, we failed to imagine just how much denser watery air could get.

As mentioned above, the path home was not yet decided. Some research revealed that the last train from Augustfehn towards Oldenburg would leave at 21:59, earlier trains always run with gaps of one hour. I, not wanting to cycle back all the way, advocated for leaving around 21:00 and catching said last train, whilst Beardygrade was eyeing cycling. At 21:14 we found ourselves outside the building, in overwhelming darkness and fog. At this point, Beardygrade started to agree with my preference, I think (confirmed by Beardygrade). (I will admit, at first I intentionally slowed down our departure slightly, but quickly realized that this would not be necessary and therefore stopped that well before 20:30.)

45 minutes for a bit less than 15 km, with full bellies, along an unfamiliar route, at night and during the densest fog I have ever seen. This was going to be difficult. My phone provided a route, but following that was tricky. We were cycling along a path next to a road and suddenly found ourselves on an intersection, with that path just ending. Later on we had a small river/canal/whatever to our left and needed to cross that. When cycling on the right side of the street it was impossible to determine whether there was a bridge on the left.

At one point I noticed that the shadow I cast in the light of Beardygrade's bicycle behind me seamlessly merged from the ground into the air, I was quite impressed. Annoyingly, we do not have any pictures of this leg of the journey, as we were too focused on getting to the train station in time. About half way there I ceased checking the map, as that would have cost too much time. Going the wrong way would have been bad, but checking every once in a while would have eliminated chances of a timely arrival altogether.

Eventually, we reached Augustfehn and soon saw a stopped row of cars. The railway crossing was closed. A long line of illuminated rectangles was moving eastwards, though it was hard to tell whether it was accelerating or decelerating. Hoping that the train was in the process of stopping, we hurried to the stairs to cross the tracks, carrying our bicycles. "Caution, slippery!", I yelled, as the bridge was not immune to the freezing temperatures. I made it down on the other side, spotting Beardygrade still at the top of the stairs and some folks calmly chatting away in one of the train's doorways. Hoping that me speeding along the platform would be enough to keep the train stopped for a few more moments I raced to the front, where bicycles are supposed to go. The button of a door designed for lower platform heights was surrounded by greenly illuminated dots, I pressed it and the door slid open. I found myself in a double decker carriage that had it's entire lower deck equipped for transporting bicycles and the likes. My companion entered shortly afterwards and immediately started worrying about the absence of bicycle tickets in our possession.

Not too long after we put the bikes down the train started moving for a bit, and then stopped again. A little while later, it departed for good. We were already frantically convincing the DB-navigator app to sell us VBN bicycle day passes, which would be valid for only five more hours. (They last until 03:00 the next morning.) Having acquired those I checked to make sure that Augustfehn was actually within VBN territory, which it was.

During the train ride towards Oldenburg I suggested that we change trains in Bad Zwischenahn, one station before Oldenburg, as the train from there would also stop in Oldenburg-Wechloy, resulting in a considerably shorter ride home. That train would also allow us to sit on actual seats next to the bikes. However, neither of us truly trusted that train to run, so we peered out of the windows on the excruciatingly long and slow approach to Bad Zwischenahn, seeing that a typical Regio-S-Bahn set was waiting on its usual platform. Preferring to rely on the one ground bound mode of transportation that is not severely impacted by limited visibility we got off the train. Half an hour later, the Regio-S-Bahn started, moving us eastwards once again, only to be abandoned by us at the very next stop.

Expedition completed. Did I mention it was foggy?

Tracklog


Photos