2024-05-01 55 -4

Location

Just off the path in Dalmuir Park.

Participants

KerrMcF

Plans

KerrMcF

I'll head here after volunteering as it's not too far to travel. Depending on how I feel at the time, I'll either drive here from volunteering and walk to the point, or I'll get the train to Dalmuir station. There's a possibility of a Tron if I decide it's worth doing one, but I'd need to look into it more. OpenStreetMap seems to be missing a lot of the paths in the park, so I'll probably be able to add at least one of these for the achievement. There's also a geocache which will likely be within view of the geohash, so I'll attempt to find that.

Expedition

As planned, I drove home after volunteering to drop off my stuff and set out to begin the expedition. On my way home from volunteering, I drove through Baljaffray Roundabout and saw that there had been an accident involving two cars, resulting in one being off the road smashed into a nearby tree with the other on the middle island at one of the entrances/exits of the roundabout (all the people involved seemed to be uninjured). At the time, the road was not closed, but I was wary that it likely would be soon. This was significant for me as in order to complete my Tron I had intended to use this roundabout to avoid crossing my path.

I left the house at 3:40pm, hoping that the road would still be open, and started heading towards it. At about 3:45pm I found out that it was not open, and that the police had blocked it off (there's an additional achievement at least). The next best alternative to Baljaffray Road that wouldn't immediately mess up my Tron was Duntocher Road, but this would ruin my future plan, meaning I would need to figure out another way back home. I followed this detour until I got back on track at Langfaulds Roundabout and continued on until my planned parking spot.

I parked at 4pm and began my walking portion of the expedition. A side note here: there was a discussion surrounding whether a Tron achievement is even possible with a solo expedition involving a car. There are ways to work around the minimal contact with your own line, but none of these are overly sensible and have a risk of endangering the person performing them. As such, since the Tron achievement states that small breaks in the expedition are allowed as long as they are explained properly, I will be using that in this expedition. Getting in and out of the car was one of these "breaks" in the interest of prioritising safety.

The walking portion was simple enough: walk up Burns Street, walk parallel to the train line, use a tunnel to pass under the train line, and walk straight to the point passing a geocache. Speaking of the geocache, this was the next of my pauses in the Tron. In order to actually find the geocache, a bit of searching in one location is required, which causes an inevitable crossing of the path. I found the geocache though, it wasn't an overly difficult one despite its size. I won't upload any photos here of the geocache to avoid potentially spoiling it for people, but it's definitely within sight of the geohash (you can probably see this from streetview, or alternatively, between the two trees on the right of my panorama). The area containing the geocache indicated that it was built by a company with a variant of my surname, so I took a photo of that, just for fun.

Once I reached the point itself (just after 4pm) I did another of those mini-pauses due to wandering at the point getting my photos. I took the long route back to allow for my Tron to continue, which involved passing at least one golf course and walking back over the train line. After reaching the car, I figured out my new route back home, and started driving after being satisfied that I could make it home Tron-style. I continued down Dumbarton Road, turned left onto Kilbowie Road (the junction here had changed from the aerial photography which initially worried me), continued until Drumry Road, turned right onto Great Western Road, went through the Great Western Retail Park, left up Duntreath Avenue, and finally along Garscadden/Drumchapel/Canniesburn Road until I was back in Bearsden.

I reached home at around 5pm, meaning the drive home was about 10 minutes longer than the drive there. The total expedition time was 1 hour and 20 minutes and, with the route taken (and illustrated in the photo section below), it was my first successful Tron. Ideally, I'll be able to do another one in the future without any necessary pauses or breaks.

Photos

The location of the geocache I found had my name on it
Reached the geohash
Zoomed out view
Water visible from the geohash
Panorama taken from the geohash, features the location of the geocache
BeReal taken just after leaving the geohash
Other side of the BeReal
Mapping of the car portion of the expedition
GPS of the walking portion of the expedition
The two above combined in one
The diversion due to the police road closure. Red was the intended route and blue was the actual route