#6: [07-Jun-22]

#5: [30-Dec-17]

#4: [04-Sep-16]

#2: [31-Dec-06]

#1: [31-Oct-01]

09-Sep-2009 -- My intention was to drive to the small village of La Chapelle-Vicomtesse and approach the CP from the East via a small road leading to l’Épinet, which is a large farm at 700 m of the CP. But once again I met a sign “Route barrée” so I had to change my plans.

Via a number of small roads I reached another sign which translates to “Country lane forbidden for motor driven vehicles except locals”. Looking at visit #1 this sign is not changed in 8 years.

But the public footpath (sentier publique) is now indicated by yellow marks. Sometimes you have to open and to close a gate. Follow this path for about 1 km keeping the cows at your right hand until you are North of the CP. Then climb the slope with the trees and enter the field after about 50 m. There is the CP, easy to find in autumn when there is no vegetation. In photograph #1 the CP is slightly right of the centre of the image.

The visit (#6) was successful with all zeros and an EPE of 5 m. The date is very special: whether you write it in ddmmyy, mmddyy or yymmdd format you have to write 090909 !

While I was busy with “no minutes, no seconds” and with my camera I was spotted by two farmers. So I walked to them to answer their obvious question what I was doing there. They thought of some inspection by the EEC (European Economic Community). In my best French I explained the Latitude Longitude story and I think they understood.

At home I had some trouble with my photographs: which one is North etc. Looking at the reports of the Dupuis family and especially of the Liska family didn’t help much. Quoting Harry Belafonte: it was clear as mud but it covered the ground”.

With the help of GoogleEarth and the French Geoportail.fr I locked my photographs to the aerial images and indeed none of the photographs were in the requested direction. The real directions are in the titles of the photographs (#1, #3, #4 & #5).

But I was not the only one. In image #10 I mounted parts of the images of the three visits and used the farm at left to line them up. It is amazing that the Dupuis family thought like me, to point to the East, but we both were pointing to SSE, an error of about 65°. The Liska family thought to point to the West; they are 180° in error for all their directions.Dupuis (2001) and Liska (2006) photographed both a row of trees (right-hand side in #10). My photograph doesn’t show any trees. Comparing the GoogleEarth image of 2002 with the Geoportail image of 2008 showed the disappearance of trees between the fields (just left of the www text in image #2).