Hash 1088

Jo had chosen the Crown in Hazelmere, a nice pub which is famous for a number of royalty such as Henry VIII having not stayed there, however it is Cask Marque accredited, which is a guarantee that inside you will get a great pint of cask ale.  Jo then realised she would be relatively busy on the day so, heroicall,y Andy stepped up at a week's notice and filled the breech with his first ever solo hash.  He called the hash to attention, once Helen and Ros had challenged the parentage of respectively a plurality of people who I did not hear who were and a wasp.  He then gave an instructive briefing as to what the flour signs meant and advised that there were going to be a Short trail of 2.7 miles a Medium at 3.8 and a Long route at 4.9.

There were a number of virgin hashers and runners of all ages including Sooper Cooper's daughters joining us in order to further put to shame those of us with short-cutting tendencies - when those one-sixth of our age do the longs.  Names given were Yelanda, Kye, Amber and Ante with apologies for spelling.  We all started together towards the junction with the two garages and just before that junction took a left at another hostelry past some houses.       

Then we emerged into a large field and, after a false trail, we went right and crossed a road or two and down towards Uplands (or was it up?).  Then, down Church Lane there was a nice view and we had our first split where the short trail went left and the mediums and the longs descended a fairly steep slope towards Hughenden Valley.  I believe there were no takers for the short: I for one was lured by the bells, the bells that were ringing presumably from the church at Hughenden Valley (could they have been the same bells heard by Benjamin Disraeli?).   

With the sun shining and a need for more material I decided to continue with the longs rather than join the medium runners (well done, I hear you say).  Down we went to the valley which was fairly green and, as we did, the growing band of bikers salivated over the potential of this track as part of a bike hash. Crossing the road, some over-enthusiastic longs went up towards Hughenden Manor whereas the check was at the car park before the buildings and it sent us left.  It was nice to run through the National Trust grounds and there was a door near a tree which looked like an entrance to Narnia.  I ran through the door but sadly did not emerge in Aslan's world and even got accused by Roger of manufacturing my own material to write about by doing so.  Then I recall that the furniture that Edmund, Lucy et al went through was indoors so that couldn't have been the way to get there: Mark told me that how they got there was Narnia business.   

At this point I realised that we had been descending for a very long time and that could not go on forever.  Sure enough we had to go up White Hill.  And up more.  And then further up.  And then right and down steeply followed by a further climb.  I discussed with our Nick, our Oracle consultant, the merits of Oracle v Sun accounts as others listened with fascination.  The terrain then started to level off again and before too long the recreation ground and the On-Inn appeared.   

Back in the pub, the hasher I drove in with from Hemel Pete and I both agreed that it was a very enjoyable hash.  He is normally in Cyprus with the oldest European hash still running but is here over the summer.  Chips were produced and consumed and Andy is now off the mark as a hare.  Well done, Andy.