http://www.confluence.org/uk/en/n52e000/index.html
The Confluence web site does have a certain appeal to it. Immediately I thought of "square bashing", a pastime that radio amateurs get up to whilst their tomato plants mature. They work a station at an arbitrary location, talk about their tomatoes, and fill in a square on a map. This is a very sad pastime and is to be despised!
However, people that go visiting confluences are not like this at all! I had to join in!
Alarmed that my nearest confluence, 52°N 1°W, in Buckingham had been recently taken, I looked eastward. 52°N 0°E is 17 miles south of Cambridge, where Jenny and Bernie live.
 10:00
am on Sunday 21st January finds us heading towards Barkway, a very
pleasant flint walled village in Hertfordshire. UpMyStreet.com
classify the place as a very affluent commuter village. It looks it
too. (We decided we weren't charging enough contracting and our rates
would have to go up this year!) We take a lane by the church that turns
into a track, and after a mile finally runs out. |
 We
start walking. There's a quarter of a mile to the confluence. It's in the
middle of a large muddy field sown with winter wheat. A strong wind, and
driving sleet add to the fun. The field is regularly rutted with tractor
tyre marks - these form "safe" paths to get access to the
middle: we don't really want to trample the farmer's crops. We get within
30 ft of the confluence - that's near enough! The Etrex GPS boasted 22ft
accuracy, so we're well within the 100 metre limit. |
Our photos, like so many on
the Confluence
web site, show yet
another field!
    |
We congratulate each other. We should do this more often. The warmth of the van beckons, and we return. Walking into the bitter easterly wind is COLD!
We see a fox. We wonder what the locals think to fox hunting.
Back in the van we give a call out on the Worked All Britain frequency - to see if we can give anyone a new square. (What a giveaway!)
We collect Jenny's family and celebrate with a traditional Sunday Roast Dinner in a Cambridge pub. We tell them of the morning's excitement, but they didn't really understand.
Boys with toys
Here's the trail from the GPS. X marks the confluence at OSGB grid ref 537000, 235000.
The 1 km square shows our track around the field, an abortive rut, and our
destination 12 metres short of the confluence.
And here's a map from MapPoint 2002:
Import the trail into MapPoint.
Nick has some comments on MapPoint here...