2023-10-27 52 9

Location

This Geohash is located on a field in Eisbergen.

Participants

Fippe

Plans

The plan was to take the train to Porta Westfalica, cycle the rest of the distance, then cycle to Bückeburg and take the train back to Osnabrück.

Weirdly, the direct train to Porta Westfalica was not to be found in the DB Navigator. It seemed that they are doing construction work and skipping the station, and offereing replacement busses. I did not want to take the bus because of the uncertainty whether they would be able to fit my bike inside. Luckily, I saw an indirect connection via Herford that was train-only and stopped in Porta Westfalica, and planned to take that one.

Expedition

In the morning, I took the train to Herford and changed onto the train that was supposed to take me to Porta Westfalica. I was a bit suspicious because the other line doesn't stop there, but the monitor reassured me that the train was going to stop in Porta Westfalica. A few minutes later, the conductor announced that the train was not going to stop in Porta Westfalica, to not trust the monitor, and that the next stop was going to be Minden. I should have been more suspicious.

While leaving the train in Minden, I was pondering if I should start cycling from there, which would take longer. Instead, I decided to play it safe, take the next train to Bückeburg and cycle from there. Interestingly, I could have been on that train from the start and could have saved half an hour.

From Bückeburg, I started cycling south, climbing my way through the Weser Hills. The coordinates were on a field, I located them in some narrow tractor tracks and recorded proof.

After leaving the field, I noticed that I had the Strava app open, but forgot to turn the recording on and didn't have a tracklog so far. I started the recording there and went back into the field so that the important part would be on the tracklog.

Afterwards, I cycled back through the hills to Bückeburg and took the train back home to Osnabrück.

Aftermath

If there was a Train Wreck/Blinded by Science equivalent for the MNIMB Geohash (reaching the coordinates despite uncooperative transport and technology), this would be the expedition to claim it.

Back home, I was able to reconstruct the way from Bückeburg to Eisbergen as a low-frequency pseudo-tracklog from my Google Maps timeline, see below for the result.