theimprobable.blog, which I look after on behalf of my partner’s brother after using it to GPS-track his adventures
I think that’s all of them, but it’s hard to be sure…
Footnotes
1 Maybe I’ve finally shaken off my habit of buying a domain name for everything.
Or maybe it’s just that I’ve embraced subdomains for more stuff. Probably the latter.
After brunch, I reckon I can get to and from this hashpoint… Tron-style!
Expedition
I planned a slightly circuitous route to this hashpoint in order to make a Tron achievement possible. I got my bike lightcycle out of
the garage, checked the brakes and tyres, and set off in the opposite direction of the hashpoint! My thinking was I could cut up Tar Lakes Road to Cogges Farm, join the A40 cyclepath at
Witney, follow it all the way to Barnard Gate, and – after passing through the hamlet and hopefully the hashpoint – turn _back_ along the opposite side of A40 (for the section that
doesn’t have a cyclepath) and then cut through South Leigh to get back home.
My first hazard came just three minutes out of my door, where a motorist failed to give way to me at Stanton Harcourt Roundabout, entering the junction even though I was already
half-way across it from the other direction. They had to slam on their brakes to avoid smashing into the side of me, and I’ll admit I may have sworn at them at least a little as they
pulled guiltily away.
The Tar Lakes road remains a delightful route from Stanton Harcourt to Witney, which I’ve enjoyed cycling many times. It was a little busier than usual, perhaps because it’s Sunday and
folks were off to and from the fishing lakes along its path to do some angling or to walk their dogs, but it was still a fast and easy journey. Reaching Cogges, I turned back towards
the hashpoint and joined the A40 cyclepath which, I hoped, would bring me right through it.
Approaching the hashpoint, I was concerned to see that the road was closed ahead, but a sign reassured me that it was still open to pedestrians, so I dismounted my bike. This also
provided an excuse for me to slow down and pay attention to my GPSr as I counted down the metres. I got within the circle of uncertainty at ~3m away, as I leaned over the dyke that
separates Pear Tree Cottage’s garden from the byway.
I snapped the regulation silly grin selfie at 14:44.
Photo taken, I then had to continue to push my bike all the way through the roadworks: the fastest way home would have been to turn around, at this point, but I didn’t want to be robbed
of my shot at the Tron achievement, so I pressed on.
At the far end of Barnard Gate I determined that cycling back along the A40 without the benefit of a cyclepath was perhaps a little too dangerous (especially after my scare earlier), so
I adapted my route to instead head East towards Eynsham, crossing the main road at the Evenlode pub to get onto Old Witney Road, through Eynsham, and back onto the road home.
Returning home, I made sure to cut the corner short as I turned into my driveway so I didn’t cross the path I’d taken as I’d initially exited, an hour earlier. A successful trip, and a
fresh achievement!
I’m on sabbatical from work right now, so I’m hoping to be able to get out to this hashpoint while the kids are at school.
Expedition
After dropping the kids off at school, the geopup/hashhound and I set out for the hashpoint. Coming up the “short side” of the bridleway from Botley would be a shorter walk, but we
opted to park in Cumnor and come up the “long side” of Harcourt Hill to avoid Oxford’s traffic (and the inevitable fee for parking on the city’s side of the hill).
Harcourt Hill (like my village of Stanton Harcourt) doubtless gets its name from the Harcourt Family, who supported William the Conqueror during his conquest of Great Britain back in
1066 and were ultimately granted huge swathes of land around this part of the world in recognition of their loyalty. To this day, you find “Harcourt” in a lot of place names in this
neck of the woods.
The hashpoint was so easy to find, we almost walked right over it: it’s right in the centre of the footpath/bridleway. Even my dog, who often doesn’t like long walks or muddy paths,
didn’t get a chance to complain before we got there. We arrived at 09:35 and took the requisite photos, which can be found below. We also kept a GPS tracklog and vlogged our experience,
all of which you can see below.
I’ve not properly hashed in a long while, so it was great to get back out there!
What’s the point of this crossing? Do rabbits pass very fast through this junction?
View East from the hashpoint (plus dog).
View West from the hashpoint.
Right in the middle of the circle of uncertainty.
Silly grin/silly tongue-sticking-out.
tl;dr: I’m tidying up and consolidating my personal hosting; I’ve made a little progress, but I’ve got a way to go – fortunately I’ve got a sabbatical coming up at
work!
At the weekend, I kicked-off what will doubtless be a multi-week process of gradually tidying and consolidating some of the disparate digital things I run, around the Internet.
I’ve a long-standing habit of having an idea (e.g. gamebook-making tool Twinebook, lockpicking puzzle game Break Into Us, my Cheating Hangman game, and even FreeDeedPoll.org.uk!),
deploying it to one of several servers I run, and then finding it a huge headache when I inevitably need to upgrade or move said server because there’s such an insane diversity of
different things that need testing!
DNDle, my Wordle-clone where you have to guess the Dungeons & Dragons 5e monster’s stat block, is now hosted by GitHub Pages. Also, I
fixed an issue reported a month ago that meant that I was reporting Giant Scorpions as having a WIS of 19 instead of 9.
Abnib, which mostly reminds people of upcoming birthdays and serves as a dumping ground for any Abnib-related shit I produce, is now hosted by
GitHub Pages.
RockMonkey.org.uk, which doesn’t really do much any more, is now hosted by GitHub Pages.
Sour Grapes, the single-page promo for a (remote) murder mystery party I hosted during a COVID lockdown, is now hosted by GitHub
Pages.
A convenience-page for giving lost people directions to my house is now hosted by GitHub Pages.
Dan Q’s Things is now automatically built on a schedule and hosted by GitHub Pages.
Robin’s Improbable Blog, which spun out from 52 Reflect, wasn’t getting enough traffic to justify
“proper” hosting so now it sits in a Docker container on my NAS.
My μlogger server, which records my location based on pings from my phone, has also moved to my NAS. This has broken
Find Dan Q, but I’m not sure if I’ll continue with that in its current form anyway.
All of my various domain/subdomain redirects have been consolidated on, or are in the process of moving to, to a tinyLinode/Akamai
instance. It’s a super simple plain Nginx server that does virtually nothing except redirect people – this is where I’ll park the domains I register but haven’t found a use for yet, in
future.
I was pretty proud of EGXchange.org, but I’ll be first to admit that it’s among the stupider of my throwaway domains.
It turns out GitHub pages is a fine place to host simple, static websites that were open-source already. I’ve been working on improving my understanding of GitHub Actions
anyway as part of what I’ve been doing while wearing my work, volunteering, and personal hats, so switching some static build processes like DNDle’s to GitHub
Actions was a useful exercise.
Stuff I’m still to tidy…
There’s still a few things I need to tidy up to bring my personal hosting situation under control:
DanQ.me
You’re looking at it. But later this year, you might be looking at it… elsewhere?
This is the big one, because it’s not just a WordPress blog: it’s also a Gemini, Spartan, and Gopher server (thanks CapsulePress!), a Finger server, a general-purpose host to a stack of complex stuff only some of which is powered by Bloq (my WordPress/PHP integrations): e.g.
code to generate the maps that appear on my geopositioned posts, code to integrate with the Fediverse, a whole stack of configuration to make my caching work the way I want, etc.
FreeDeedPoll.org.uk
Right now this is a Ruby/Sinatra application, but I’ve got a (long-running) development branch that will make it run completely in the browser, which will further improve privacy, allow
it to run entirely-offline (with a service worker), and provide a basis for new features I’d like to provide down the line. I’m hoping to get to finishing this during my Automattic
sabbatical this winter.
The website’s basically unchanged for most of a decade and a half, and… umm… it looks it!
A secondary benefit of it becoming browser-based, of course, is that it can be hosted as a static site, which will allow me to move it to GitHub Pages too.
When I took over running the world’s geohashing hub from xkcd‘s Randall Munroe (and davean), I flung the site together on whatever hosting I had sitting
around at the time, but that’s given me some headaches. The outbound email transfer agent is a pain, for example, and it’s a hard host on which to apply upgrades. So I want to get that
moved somewhere better this winter too. It’s actually the last site left running on its current host, so it’ll save me a little money to get it moved, too!
Geohashing’s one of the strangest communities I’m honoured to be a part of. So it’d be nice to treat their primary website to a little more respect and attention.
Right now I run this on my NAS, but that turns out to be a pain sometimes because it means that if my home Internet goes down (e.g. thanks to a power cut, which we have from time to time), I lose access to the first and last place I
go on the Internet! So I’d quite like to move that to somewhere on the open Internet. Haven’t worked out where yet.
Next steps
It’s felt good so far to consolidate and tidy-up my personal web hosting (and to rediscover some old projects I’d forgotten about). There’s work still to do, but I’m expecting to spend
a few months not-doing-my-day-job very soon, so I’m hoping to find the opportunity to finish it then!
I originally though I’d cycle out here in the evening and see if I could reach the hashpoint, but with the weather so delightful (and the dog clamouring for a walk) I opted to adapt my
lunchtime plans to go to Standlake Post Office (rather than the only-slightly-closer Eynsham Post Office) to post a parcel and take the dog for a walk… and check out the hashpoint at
the same time!
Expedition
Success! The dog and I parked near the Post Office, and tired firstd walking through the allotments, but they don’t go as far back as I thought they might and we couldn’t really get
close to the hashpoint. So we doubled back, with the anticipation of going via the churchyard, when I spotted a convenient footpath sign (for a footpath not marked on my map), so we
followed that. Conveniently it turned out to be a shortcut to Horns Way, the alternative route I’d considered to try to get close to the hashpoint. Travelling along it, we found an
(also not on the map) back gate into the allotments: we could’ve just come this way, after all! We’d later use this route to get back home.
Approaching the hashpoint, we needed to push through a thicket of trees and jump a ditch, but this delivered us into a delightful meadow. We reached the hashpoint at 13:44, took the
requisite silly photo, and set off back. On returning to the footpath (by a decidedly inferior route) we discovered a bench (with a dedication on it) that also wasn’t listed on
OpenStreetMap nor on OpenBenches. I took a photo and pushed it to OpenBenches. There should be an achievement for that.
I thought it might be fun to try to map the limits of my geocaching/geohashing. That is, to draw the smallest possible convex polygon that surrounds all of the
geocaches I’ve found and geohashpoints I’ve successfully visited.
Mathematically, such a shape is a convex hull – the smallest polygon encircling a set of points without concavity. Here’s how I made it:
1. Extract all the longitude/latitude pairs for every successful geocaching find and geohashpoint expedition.I keep them in my blog database, so I was able to use some SQL to
fetch them:
SELECTDISTINCT coord_lon.meta_value lon, coord_lat.meta_value lat
FROM wp_posts
LEFTJOIN wp_postmeta expedition_result ON wp_posts.ID = expedition_result.post_id AND expedition_result.meta_key ='checkin_type'LEFTJOIN wp_postmeta coord_lat ON wp_posts.ID = coord_lat.post_id AND coord_lat.meta_key ='checkin_latitude'LEFTJOIN wp_postmeta coord_lon ON wp_posts.ID = coord_lon.post_id AND coord_lon.meta_key ='checkin_longitude'LEFTJOIN wp_term_relationships ON wp_posts.ID = wp_term_relationships.object_id
LEFTJOIN wp_term_taxonomy ON wp_term_relationships.term_taxonomy_id = wp_term_taxonomy.term_taxonomy_id
LEFTJOIN wp_terms ON wp_term_taxonomy.term_id = wp_terms.term_id
WHERE wp_posts.post_type ='post'AND wp_posts.post_status ='publish'AND wp_term_taxonomy.taxonomy ='kind'AND wp_terms.slug ='checkin'AND expedition_result.meta_value IN ('Found it', 'found', 'coordinates reached', 'Attended');
2. Next, I determine the convex hull of these points. There are an interesting variety of
algorithms for this so I adapted the Monotone Chain approach (there are
convenient implementations in many languages). The algorithm seems pretty efficient, although that doesn’t matter much to me because I’m caching the results for a fortnight.
I watched way too many animations of different convex hull algorithms before selecting this one… pretty-much arbitrarily.
An up-to-date (well, no-more than two weeks outdated) version of the map appears on my geo* stats page. I don’t often get to go caching/hashing
outside the bounds already-depicted, but I’m excited to try to find opportunities to push the boundaries outwards as I continue to explore the world!
(I could, I suppose, try to draw a second larger area of places I’ve visited: the difference between the smaller and larger areas would represent all of the opportunities I’d missed to
find a hashpoint!)
I haven’t hashed for long enough that my home graticule got marked as inactive. I’ve got a little free time this morning, so let’s fix that!
Expedition
It took two attempts to reach this hashpoint.
The first attempt saw me set off around 09:40, with a plan to drive over the world’s
stupidest toll bridge (paying 5p for the privilege), park up in Cumnor somewhere, then work down the Cumnor-Appleton footpath before dipping into the fields (which are likely to be
fallow this time of year) to claim the hashpoint. I suggested to take the dog, and the 7-year-old child asked if he could join me too, so the three of us with our eight legs set off.
This winter’s seen heavy rain around these parts, and the stream that runs alongside the footpath had broken its banks and flooded the fields. The water had receded, but the ground
remained extremely boggy. That kind of thick, wellie-sucking mud that means that if you stop walking for more than a couple of seconds, you might as well give up and say you live there
now because your boot is never coming back.
The kid found the going especially-tough, especially after a particularly-deep puddle splashed over the edge of his wellies, and asked to turn back. The dog was finding it a bit
challenging too! So we doubled-back and found a geocache a little way off the
path. We’ve generally been disappointed by Cumnor’s geocaches and especially this series, finding them to be ill-maintained or completely absent, but it looks like the cache owner
has been working on repairing and replacing them towards the tail end of last year and this one was soon found. I drove the dog and child home (back across the toll bridge), then came
back out myself (paying the fivepence toll a third time). So began the second attempt:
Unburdened by short-legged dogs and damp-footed kids, I made better progress. At points, the path was completely flooded-out, but this gave me an excuse to walk along the “tramlines” of
the cultivator that must’ve been working in the field last year, which put me on a better course to reach the hashpoint. By 11:06 I was well within the circle of uncertainty and
declared the mission a success.
Then I plodged back through the mud, changed my footwear, and drove over the toll bridge a fourth time. The attendant, clearly sick of seeing me driving back and forth, took
pity on me and let me off without paying yet another 5p piece, so that was nice.
This “path” seems to be a stream.
Muddy boots
200 metres to go.
Zero point!
Silly grin
View North from the hashpoint.
View East from the hashpoint.
View South from the hashpoint.
View West from the hashpoint.
What topical timing, given that it’ll be my birthday in four days!
My birthday is slightly overshadowed by the proximity to it of our eldest child’s birthday, but we can still find enough overlap of interest to do some fun things. Here we are last
year, for example, at a magic-themed cocktail-making
workshop (with non-alcoholic recipes for the kids, of course).
Of the things I have least but treasure most, perhaps the biggest is time. Between work, volunteering, and childcare, I often find myself rushing to cram-in any of the diversity of “play” activities I engage in.1
I always feel particularly guilty if I step away to do “me things” that put me out of reach, because I know that while I’m off having fun, my absence necessarily means that
somebody else has to be the one to break up whatever child squabble is happening right now2. It feels particularly
extravagant to, for example, spend a weekend in pursuit of a distant geohash point or two3.
A fancy dinner in a hotel bar in the middle of a two-day geohashing expedition across the Midlands, as far from work and home responsibilities as I can manage? Yes please!
So one of the best gifts I ever received was for my birthday the year before last, when Ruth gave me “a weekend off”4, affording me the opportunity to do
exactly that. I picked some dates and she, JTA, and the kids vanished, leaving me free to spend a few days hacking my way
from Herefordshire to somewhere near Birmingham in what turned out to be the
worst floods of the year. It was delightful.5
Most people can’t give me “time”: it doesn’t grow on trees, and I haven’t found a place to order it online. It’s not even always practical to help me reclaim my own time by taking fixed
timesinks off my to-do list6. But for those
that can, it’s a great gift that I really appreciate.
It’s my birthday on Monday, if anybody wants to volunteer for childminding duties at any point. Just sayin’. 😅
2 Ours can be a particularly squabbly pair, and really know how to push one another’s
buttons to escalate a fight!
3 Unless I were to take the kids with me: then if feels fine, but then I’ve got a
different problem to deal with! The dog’s enough of a handful when you’re out traipsing through a bog in the rain!
5 I think that Ruth feels that her gift to me on my 41st birthday was tacky, perhaps
because for her it was a “fallback”: what she came up with after failing to buy a more-conventional gift. But seriously: a scheduled weekend to disconnect from everything
else in my life was an especially well-received gift.
6 Not least because I’m such a control freak that some of the biggest timesinks in my life
are things I would struggle to delegate or even accept help with!
Do you play in your daily life? What says “playtime” to you?
How do I play? Let me count the ways!
RPGs
I’m involved in no fewer than three different RPG campaigns (DMing the one for
The Levellers) right now, plus periodic one-shots. I love a good roleplaying game, especially one that puts character-building and storytelling
above rules-lawyering and munchkinery, specifically because that kind of collaborative, imaginative experience feels more like the kind of thing we call “play” when
done it’s done by children!
Family D&D and Abnib D&D might have a distinctly different tone, but they’re still both playtime activities.
Videogames
I don’t feel like I get remotely as much videogaming time as I used to, and in theory I’ve become more-selective about exactly what I spend my time on1.
Similarly, I don’t feel like I get as much time to grind through my oversized board games collection as I used to2,
but that’s improving as the kids get older and can be roped-into a wider diversity of games3.
Our youngest wakes early on weekend mornings and asks to kick off his day with board games. Our eldest, pictured, has grown to the point where she’s working her way through all of the
animal-themed games at our local board games cafe.
Escape Rooms
I love a good escape room, and I can’t wait until the kids are old enough for (more of) them too so I’ve an excuse to do more of them. When we’re not playing conventional escape rooms,
Ruth and I can sometimes be found playing board game-style boxed “kit” ones (which have very variable quality, in my experience) and we’ve
recently tried a little Escape Academy.
Ruth and I make a great duo when we remember to communicate early-and-often and to tag-team puzzles by swapping what we’re focussing on when we get stuck.
They’re not the only satnav-based activities I do at least partially “for fun” though! I contribute to OpenStreetMap, often through the
“gamified” experience of the StreetComplete app, and I’m very slowly creeping up the leader board at OpenBenches. Are these “play”? Sure, maybe.
And all of the above is merely the structured kinds of play I engage in. Playing “let’s pretend”-style games with the kids (even when they make it really, really
weird) adds a whole extra aspect. Also there’s the increasingly-rare murder mystery parties we sometimes hold: does that count as roleplaying, or some other kind of play?
A chef, a priest, and a librarian walk into a party… stop me if you’ve heard this one.
Suffice to say, there’s plenty of play in my life, it’s quite varied and diverse, and there is, if anything, not enough of it!
Footnotes
1 I say that, and yet somehow Steam tells me that one of my most-played games this year
was Starfield, which was… meh? Apparently compelling enough
that I’ve “ascended” twice, but in hindsight I wish I hadn’t bothered.
2 Someday my group and I will finish Pandemic Legacy: Season 2 so we can get
started on Season 0 which has sat
unplayed on my shelves since I got it… oooh… two or three years ago‽
3 This Christmas, I got each of them their first “legacy” game: Zombie Kids for the younger one, My City for the elder. They both seem pretty good.
4Geocaching is where you use military satellite networks to find lost tupperware. Geohashing uses the same technology but what you find is a whole
lot of nothing. I don’t think I can explain why I find the latter more-compelling.
We’d intended to actually go to the Isle of Man, even turning up at Gatwick Airport six hours before our flight and working at Pret in order to optimally fit around our
workdays.
It’s (approximately) our 0x10th anniversary1,
and, struggling to find a mutually-convenient window in our complex work schedules, we’d opted to spend a few days exploring the Isle of Man. Everything was fine, until we were aboard
the ‘plane.
As the last few passengers were boarding, putting their bags into overhead lockers, and finding their seats, Ruth observed that out on the tarmac, bags were being removed
from the aircraft.
Once everybody was seated and ready to take off, the captain stood up at the front of the ‘plane and announced that it had been cancelled2.
The Isle of Man closes, he told us (we assume he just meant the airport) and while they’d be able to get us there before it did, there wouldn’t be sufficient air traffic
control crew to allow them to get back (to, presumably, the cabin crews’ homes in London).
To add insult to injury: even though the crew clearly knew that the ‘plane would be cancelled before everybody boarded, they waited until we were all aboard to tell us then
made us wait for the airport buses to come back to take us back to the terminal.
Back at the terminal we made our way through border control (showing my passport despite having not left the airport, never mind the country) and tried to arrange a rebooking,
only to be told that they could only manage to get us onto a flight that’d be leaving 48 hours later, most of the way through our mini-break, so instead we opted for a refund and gave
up.3
After dinner at the reliably-good Ye Old Six
Bells in Horley, down the road from Gatwick Airport, we grumpily made our way back home.
We resolved to try to do the same kinds of things that we’d hoped to do on the Isle of Man, but closer to home: some sightseeing, some walks, some spending-time-together. You know the
drill.
There’s evidence on the Isle of Man of Roman occupation from about the 1st century BCE through the 5th century CE, so we found a
local Roman villa and went for a look around.
A particular highlight of our trip to the North Leigh Roman Villa – one of those “on your doorstep so you never go” places – was when the audio tour advised us to beware of the snails
when crossing what was once the villa’s central courtyard.
At first we thought this was an attempt at humour, but it turns out that the Romans brought with them to parts of Britain a variety of large edible snail – helix pomatia –
which can still be found in concentration in parts of the country where they were widely farmed.4
Once you know you’re looking for them, these absolute unit gastropods are easy to spot.
There’s a nice little geocache near the ruin, too, which we were able to find on our way back.
Before you think that I didn’t get anything out of my pointless hours at the airport, though, it turns out I’d brought home a souvenier… a stinking cold! How about that for efficiency:
I got all the airport-germs, but none of the actual air travel. By mid-afternoon on Tuesday I was feeling pretty rotten, and it only got worse from then on.
I felt so awful on Wednesday that the most I was able to achieve was to lie on the sofa feeling sorry for myself, between sessions of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the
Kingdom.
I’m confident that Ruth didn’t mind too much that I spent Wednesday mostly curled up in a sad little ball, because it let her get on with applying to a couple of jobs she’s interested
in. Because it turns out there was a third level of disaster to this week: in addition to our ‘plane being cancelled and me getting sick, this week saw Ruth made redundant as her
employer sought to dig itself out of a financial hole. A hat trick of bad luck!
Sniffle. Ugh.
As Ruth began to show symptoms (less-awful than mine, thankfully) of whatever plague had befallen me, we bundled up in bed and made not one but two abortive attempts at watching a film
together:
Spin Me Round, which looked likely to be a simple comedy that wouldn’t require much effort
by my mucus-filled brain, but turned out to be… I’ve no idea what it was supposed to be. It’s not funny. It’s not dramatic. The characters are, for the most part, profoundly
uncompelling. There’s the beginnings of what looks like it was supposed to be a romantic angle but it mostly comes across as a creepy abuse of power. We watched about half and gave
up.
Ant-Man and the Wasp:
Quantumania, because we figured “how bad can a trashy MCU sequel be anyway; we know what to expect!” But we
couldn’t connect to it at all. Characters behave in completely unrealistic ways and the whole thing feels like it was produced by somebody who wanted to be making one of the
new Star Wars films, but with more CGI. We watched about half and gave up.
As Thursday drew on and the pain in my head and throat was replaced with an unrelenting cough, I decided I needed some fresh air.
The dog needed a walk, too, which is always a viable excuse to get out and about.
I find myself wondering if (despite three jabs and a previous infection) I’ve managed to contract covid again, but I haven’t found the inclination to take a test. What would I do differently if I do have it, now, anyway? I feel like we
might be past that point in our lives.
All in all, probably the worst anniversary celebration we’ve ever had, and hopefully the worst we’ll ever have. But a fringe benefit of a willingness to change bases is that we can
celebrate our 10th5 anniversary next year, too.
Here’s to that.
Footnotes
1 Because we’re that kind of nerds, we count our anniversaries in base 16
(0x10 is 16), or – sometimes – in whatever base is mathematically-pleasing and gives us a nice round number. It could be our 20th anniversary, if you prefer octal.
2 I’ve been on some disastrous aeroplane journeys before, including one just earlier this
year which was supposed to take me from Athens to Heathrow, got re-arranged to go to Gatwick, got
delayed, ran low on fuel, then instead had to fly to Stansted, wait on the tarmac for a couple of hours, then return to Gatwick (from which I travelled – via Heathrow –
home). But this attempt to get to the Isle of Man was somehow, perhaps, even worse.
3 Those who’ve noticed that we were flying EasyJet might rightly give a knowing nod at
this point.
4 The warning to take care not to tread on them is sound legal advice: this particular
variety of snail is protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981!
5 Next year will be our 10th anniversary… in base 17. Eww, what the hell is base 17 for
and why does it both offend and intrigue me so?
I wasn’t supposed to be here. I was supposed to be on the Isle of Man with my partner, celebrating our 0x10th anniversary. But
this week’s been a week of disasters: my partner lost her job, our plane to the Isle of Man got cancelled, and then I got sick (most-likely, I got to catch airport germs from people I
got to sit next to on an aircraft which was then cancelled before it had a chance to take off). So mostly this week I’ve been sat at home playing video games.
But the dog needed a walk, and my partner needed to go to the supermarket, so I had her drop me and the geopooch off in West Witney to find the hashpoint and then walk to meet them
after she’d collected the shopping. I couldn’t find my GPSr, so I used my phone, and it was reporting low accuracy until I rebooted it, by which time I’d walked past the hashpoint and had to
double-back, much to the doggo’s confusion.
I reached the hashpoint at 14:16 BST (and probably a few points before than, owing to my navigation failure). I needed to stand
very close to the fence to get within the circle of uncertainty, but at least I didn’t have to reach through and into the school grounds.
My evening just freed up, so – weather-permitting – I might brave the sleet and cold and cycle out to this hashpoint this evening.
Expedition
Our dog had surgery at the start of the week and has now recovered enough to want a short walk, so I changed my plan to cycle for one to drive (with the dog) out to somewhere near the
hashpoint and take her for a walk to and around it. Amazingly, I might have been faster to cycle: a crash on the A40 had lead to lots of traffic being re-routed along the exact same
back roads that was to be my most-direct route, and on the local rat run through South Leigh I got trapped behind a line of folks who weren’t familiar with this particular unlit and
twisty road and took the entire derestricted section at an average of 25mph. Ah well.
Out of laziness, I didn’t bring my GPSr or make a tracklog; I just used the Geohashdroid app and took a screenshot when I got there. South Leigh Common is pleasant, but it was dark, and
my photos are all a little bit hard to make out! But the stars were beautiful tonight, and the dog loved one of her first outings since her surgery and enjoying running around in the
long wet grass and sticking her head into rabbit holes. At 19:00 precisely I got within about a metre and a half of the hashpoint – well within the circle of uncertainty – and turned to
head home.
I also took the time while there to update OpenStreetMap by drawing in the
boundaries of the common, replacing the nondescript “point” that had marked it before.
Photos
Proof from Geohashdroid
Silly grins in the dark from a man and his dog
Long exposure, with flashlight on, showing the hashpoint and the Common beyond
I bundled the dog into the car and drove out to Piddington, a couple of kilometres North of the hashpoint. Cherwell Council advertise a circular walk
that seems to circle from the village (which looked like a good place to park) up to Muswell Hill, the summit of which is near the hashpoint.
She and I walked through Piddington, past the church, and up onto the path. A soggy kilometre or so later we quickly discovered that this was going to be more-challenging than I’d
anticipated. We quickly got bogged down in a flooded field and needed to double-back. With my socks already soaking wet and the dog in a similar condition, we found a different route
that looped around the entire hill and through an alpaca farm (or were they llamas?), then we worked our way up the South face of the hill, over the summit, and down to the hashpoint.
We got there at 11:00 UTC, took a quick look around and pulled the closest thing a dog can manage to a silly grin, and then hacked our way back (by road) to Piddington for the drive
home and some dry clothes.
When I saw this hashpoint appear I thought to myself: that’s eminently achievable! I hoped I might be able to slip away from work for a lunchtime cycle to claim it.
But the gods of technology didn’t approve of my plan and turned my workday into a catastrophe of the kind that only a computer can, and the chance of taking a long lunch evaporated
quickly. But fortune dealt me a second hand when the weather held off into the evening, and I instead opted for a post-dinner huckle in the dark out to this hashpoint.
I set out around 18:30, South through Stanton Harcourt then North up the adorably-named Ducklington Road. It took some time to sight the somewhat-concealed bridleway around the hill of
Cokethorpe School. And then, another challenge – navigating by OpenStreetMap I missed my turning and went straight through a farmyard, and had to carry my bike over a fence at the other
end. Turns out the map is wrong and I later found a sign indicating the true course of the bridleway; I’ll get that corrected.
I abandoned my bike for the final 50 metres, trekking through the thick grass of an unmown meadow to the hashpoint and arriving around 19:00. No panoramic photo today it’s too dark –
but you get a silly grin.
Pleased with this fast expedition, I diverted on my route home to the Harcourt Arms pub for a pint of their surprisingly-delicious
seasonal guest ale, Fairytale of Brew York, which genuinely tastes like stollen. There, I wrote up this
expedition report, but I’ll have to get home before I can extract my GPSr‘s tracklog.
I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it to this one, but if I can I’ll cycle over there on my lunch break or right after work.
Expedition
The dog was making an attention-seeking nuisance of herself while I was trying to work today, so I wrapped up all the critical things I needed to do so I could take her our for a walk
this afternoon to try to wear her out. I’m moderately familiar with Appleton – I have a regular cycle circuit that comes right through it! – but I’ve never been out to the cricket club
and sports field, so I pointed the hashing hound in the right direction and let her lead the way.
At first it looked like this was going to be a successful expedition: the needle on my GPSr pointed almost directly ahead as I walked up
the lane towards Appleton Sports Field. But as I got closer, I realised to my disappointment that the hashpoint was
going to be about 25 metres into the adjacant field, guarded by a trio of bullocks. At 15:00 I declared the expedition a failure. The doggo and I completed an exploration of the lane
and had a look around the sports field, spotted a pair of muntjack deer ambling around, and then headed back home.
I’ll be back in Appleton later today to buy a Christmas tree, so I’ll wave at the cattle as I go past, again.
Tracklog
My GPSr kept a tracklog; note that this was an “on the way” stopoff so the start and end point isn’t the same!
