Geohashing and Geocaching

On the Bank Holiday, I decided to head off to the local Geohash to see if anyone else had decided to head over for a little jaunt. In the end, I decided I was too tired from Sunday's energetic activities. I also had a lot of pressing engagements and had to keep Julie occupied.

However, I will be going Geohashing next Saturday, on an annual little walking trip to the Lake District with a few lovely chaps - so I thought it seemed a good time to share the sport with you. Inspired by XKCD, Geohashing is a spontaneous adventure generator, which can even connect you up with other fun loving geeks.

Firstly, you should find the graticule you live in. Randall's provided a simple point and click way to help you do this for you here. A Graticule is a one degree x one degree (of latitude/longitude) rectangle, and all of your adventures will fall within your home graticule (unless you go on holiday or just fancy a chance).

So, I've wandered over to this map and found that Reading's in the Swindon graticule. This is at latitude 50, longitude 0. I now need to find out where my adventure will be within these points - what comes after the decimal point. Easy.



Simply take today's date and combine it with the day's opening Dow Jones Index (or yesterday's, if you live in Western Europe) in an md5 hash. Put the digits into decimal and append them to your graticule's latitude and longitude. Voila, you now have an amazingly small area of land to go and visit.

This area may be anywhere. If it's in a wood, then get walking, if it's on a mountain, then get climbing (as one New Zealander did - a 4 hour climb just to get to the spot...no-one else came), if it's in a lake, then get in a boat and earn the Water Geohasher award. Not that there's actually any award.

There's meetups at 4pm every Saturday, so grab a GPS receiver and head out. You might just find somewhere pretty or interesting to go, or you might even meet up with other like-minded geeks.

While you're at it, why not combine your day out with some Geocaching too? A Geocache is a little box of treasure hidden somewhere around a given GPS location, and if you're clever enough to find it, then you can open up the box, take one item and leave another.

I'll be doing both this Saturday ^^

I've also helped get the Swindon graticule set up on the Geohashing wiki and put together a Swindon Facebook page for it. Reading falls just about within the Swindon graticule you see, although I've also signed up to the London West wiki and London West Facebook Group too, as they're pretty nearby.

So, go get involved and have some adventures!

:)