THE BIG BIMBLE challenge - Random Great Britain Exploration

[rich59]

A while ago I asked myself a question. What is Great Britain made up of? What is it like? Of course it is a whole lot of different places. So, what if I selected some places at random to represent Great Britain. If I explored, visited a representative set of truely random places then I might get in my head what the whole of the country was like. OK, it's a bit whacky. But this suggested some interesting challenges. It suggested travel and exploration. It suggested I might get off the beaten track. I would learn new things. It suggested I might get arrested for trespass, so I might only get close to some. Some might be geographically innaccessible.

So I got some random numbers and plugged them into "streetmap.co.uk". A lot turned out to be in the Sea, so I discarded most (but not all) of those. The remainder are as below.

Then I thought it might be fun for others to have a go at. So here it is:-

The Big Bimble:-

The challenge then is to travel to and visit the following locations (or as close as it is reasonable to get to). It should be done in as bushcrafty manner as you feel appropriate. You can select one or many. Do them in any order you choose. You are encouraged to post interesting aspects of your journey (especially if relevant to bushcraft) and as much as possible about the actual location and what you did there. What is the flora and fauna and ecology? It's geology? It's ancient and modern history? What did you do while you were there? The locations are down to 1 metre on the OS map grid system. Photos would be great.

Plug these 12 figure references into streetmap.co.uk to see where they are

1) 472170,376316
2) 314683,705932
3) 378312,861379
4) 168364,628225
5) 209969,287492 (Sea)
6) 338574,860970
7) 104630,717490 (Sea)
8) 379377,323014
9) 436607,084583 (Sea, Just)
10) 244959,756656
11) 094218,559181
12) 525895,396125
13) 107461,392059


If you are pedantic then by all means be very exact and use GPS to get down to the exact location.

Of course you should ask appropriate permissions to enter any private area. And leave it as you find it.

Whether I get very far on this personally depends on a lot of things.

 

[Grooveski]

4) 168364,628225

OK, it's nowhere near it really but some pics from the Kintyre peninsula can be seen here. Much of Kintyre looks similar.
Is it sad that scanning down the list that grid ref jumped out the page as being one I kind of recognised?

Blogged some of the trips over on SotP too, mostly just paddling photos though.
1,2,3,4,5 and there may even be more.

The visible history of the area goes back to the stone age with barrows, henges, turf houses and curious little turf beehive shaped outhouses that don't appear to be very common in other areas. Early iron age seen widespread deforestation followed by coppicing to provide charcoal for use in smelting the localy mined ore.
More recently the highland clearances hit the area directly and then indirectly as many people from here moved north into some of the more heavily vacated areas of the west coast, their roundhouse sites are still visible(barely).

Local novelties include an apparent lack of squirrels and an abundance of owls. Most of the deer are non-native Sika although Reds are still common on higher ground.

If you decide on a trip up Rich, get in touch. We're out there a fair bit(T minus two weeks to the next one) and usually have a spare seat in a boat.

 

[h2o]

giving 6 figure grid references with the map code .u know the 2 letters would be easy as we all could find stuff local

 

[EdS]

the first number of each part of the ref is the map code.

Easy enough to change it into the letter version - both are "normal" OS references. 3XXXXX 2XXXXX is how digital maps represent NZ type grid ref.

Start at bottom left corner - the SV square this is 0xxxx 0xxxx. As you move east or north count how ever many of each letter letter square and that is the number (always starting at 0)

so: SQ = 1xxxx 0xxxx, SW = 0xxxx 1xxxx, TL = 5xxxx 2xxxx

http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/gi/nationalgrid/nghelp1.html

 

[locum76]

2) 314683,705932

i used to live very near here on a dairy farm when i was a kid. does that count as a start?

 

[h2o]

thanks eds.Is the first 1 map sd?

 

[brancho]

I used to holiday (at my gradparents) as a kid ten miles from 3 havent been in that area for years. Even in summer it is cold but the Sea water is clear.
Number 10 would be a good start
Alf

 

[match]

If you do have any pictures of these locations, why not add them to:

http://www.geograph.org.uk/

This project aims to get a photo of every grid square of the OS Maps of the UK. Quite useful if you're planning a trip somewhere and want to know its bushcraft potential, or the likelihood of running into someone with a camera