The Hashers

Spot Donut LoudonTasteless TT2 Hitchhiker SkinnyDipper Utopia Dumper Septic Florence Canoeist Ben OldFart Itsyor Fannybag Bogbrush Motox NoSole 2Bob with dog Lucy Bollard Naked Roz CSGas
and others from OH³. Sadly, the recorder had blown its battery so this is from memory.

The 1700^th Hash

The World Cup, Wimbledon, the Longest Day Sunrise Hash and the 1700^th Hash! So much going on. So much to choose from. Those nine people who chose to get up really early to watch the sun rise and run a Hash laid by Spot and Iceman had a thoroughly enjoyable experience and were presented with rather nifty commemorative cloth badges for their trouble. Cheating, though heavily involved in this evening’s festivities, made the effort to turn up and brought bacon. I believe it was cooked...

So having done the early morning shift Cheating continued with the evening. We were, he informed us at a Gather Round that equalled anything Slowsucker has done in the past for longevity, going to experience a Long and a Walkers Trail and the Long Trailers could largely ignore the W’s that might appear. There were to be two Regroups plus an R&B (more of this later) Regroup with stunning views of a mansion, lake and what John Major described as the best cricket ground in Britain. There would be some long Bar Checks. Food and beer on the common at the end. There was so much information it was difficult to take it all in. Which probably explains the confusion among our number later on... Cheating maundered on with all the élan of George Osbourne at the Despatch Box and, like the population of Great Britain, we listened with a mixture of horror and delight. Finally, we On Outed. Thank the Lord.

Fortunately it was a beautiful evening as we lost our way early on across that first cricket pitch. We had reached it via a curious obelisk that stuck up like a wounded stone thumb and reminded us of the Solstice morning at Stonehenge. Bogbrush led a small group the wrong way towards the road as the rest mumbled about by the edge of the pitch until Slapper and Zeb pointed out the direction and we began a long descent into the undergrowth. I found the first of the Bars which was luckily not too far down the hill from the tangent that led off into the nettles and briar. This was, though, nothing to the Bar-10 that Itsyor and I found a little later. We had somehow broken away from the Pack and were (I nearly said ‘gaily’) merrily trotting down a series of narrow trails that led out to a couple of large new buildings approved, no doubt, by Buckinghamshire County Council in a moment of Green Belt vandalism. Still, it gave us a chance to slow down and enjoy our position as FRBs, chatting about the vagaries of Planning Permission and waiting for the rest to catch up. They did. Just as we hit the Bar, with a large ‘TEN’ inscribed carefully with flour earlier by the good Zebedee. Hmm. Florence was a tad unimpressed. Donut even more so. We backed up, counting the blobs. Got to seven when Zeb called us back down the Trail again since he had opted to lay the true Trail about four back rather than ten. Interesting idea. Zeb’s confusion began to veer between intentional and unintentional. Especially when we had got to the first Regroup and stood about for a while beating forlornly at the flies who were ecstatic at the arrival of some salty, sweating flesh. Some particularly equine-vampire type specimens had given NoSole and Donut a particularly nasty time and we were all glad to start off again to try and leave the clouds of buzzing insects (generally) behind. Zeb had kindly pointed us in the right direction and trotted off with us... only to trot all the way back when he realised we were going in the wrong direction.

He screwed me up completely at the next Regroup. As everyone else stumped off up the field he leaned over confidentially and informed me in a friendly manner that if I nipped round the corner of the hedge I would see some horse jumps and up that hill would be the right way. He rounded it off with a conspiratorial wink and I beasted off. Strange – no horse jumps. A sheepish Zeb suddenly appeared. “Oops. I think it’s the next field.” He muttered. It was. And very nice it was to lead the Pack up that long, grassy hill before slipping into the forest ahead of Florence. Now there was some low-lying, nasty barbed wire at the edge of the forest so I stopped a little way down to shout back at the followers. Flo appeared at the gap... just as a bloody great big badger thundered across in front of her like a massive, supersonic shaving brush. Flo stopped dead, as if a bloody great big badger had thundered across in front of her. Surprising the amount of noise it made. Rather like it was wearing boots.

It all began to get a bit messy as we barrelled through thick undergrowth until we hit a Check down in the forest on a track. Instead of casting about in the green stuff Canoeist, CSGas, myself and a few others decided to run off up the track. Nothing for some time. Then a gleam of white, splashed on a tree trunk leading off into the woods. Yippee! But then came an On Back call. We had found other blobs leading off and we checked further back up the hill to find the Trail leading down to this point. On Back? You must be joking. Canoeist and I crashed onwards while the others went straight up a track that paralleled our path. We met up. We laughed and joked. We found a couple of W’s. We lost the Trail. Ooer. It took us a while until we popped out on a road by a sign that read ‘Ibstone’. Bit of a result, we thought. Even though CSGas and a couple of others ran off down the road away from the sign... But we had not got anywhere near as lost as Donut and Spex who had managed to wander as far as the M40 and had to knock on a little old lady’s door to ask the way back to Ibstone! We, meanwhile, had met BigStiffy, who showed us through the undergrowth to Cheating’s panorama view of the cricket pitch, manor and lake that he had promised. He and Slappper were there and we downed a conciliatory rum or Baileys (R&B, geddit?!) while thoroughly enjoying the vista down below in the valley. It was beautifully and calmly English – apart from the constant and extremely load baaing of a large group of unseen sheep!

A pleasant trot back to the road with Fannybag (just the one Bar-Check!) saw us back to the common where beer and excellent pork, rolls, paté, coleslaw and crisps awaited us overseen very professionally by Bollard Naked to whom we owe a vote of thanks.

A big thank you also goes to Cheating, Zeb and Slapper for the hard work they put in to make BH³’s 1700^th Hash a success. Well done, guys.

On On. Hashgate.

Down Downs

RA Motox started to present the the Down Downs but we had to leave due to the lateness of the hour. Sorry ‘bout that 

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