With high winds blowing and a biting chill in the air we gathered in the car park at Great Missenden anticipating a wild night. After a quick intro from hare-Matt we were off to check it out and quickly arrived at the long-short split at the first check.
We (the longs) then followed the path over a stile and into a fenced equine field with stables at the top and suffered the protests of an irate land-owner who was not best-pleased about us running through her premises. It was a public footpath though and I wonder if this woman spends every evening watching over her patch of England lest a group of joggers should come running through on a dark and cold December night? Anyway, we soon discovered that we'd lost our hare and had in-fact gone completely the wrong way so we had to do an about-turn and scarper back through the paddock to meet-up with Matt who was standing by Mrs. Fuzzy Lumpkin's (Google it!) front gate where she demanded to know which group we were from. Roger amused himself by wondering what she was actually going to do with this knowledge and who she was planning to complain to.
Our mistaken trail was a premonition of the hash to come for this was the falsiest hash known to hash-kind. There were more falsies than the alarms of the boy who cried wolf; more falsies than at an annual Jordan look-a-like convention; even more falsies than a Great White with periodontitis. I actually lost count of how many false trails Matt had set, including a double-false (or pair of falsies) which left Hawk-eye threatening to top himself if he had to go up yet another false trail and several of the rest of us muttering threats of topping Matt (notably Kerry who was seething with rage when the longs and shorts temporarily re-grouped).
Roz claimed no responsibility for her husband's trickery evidencing the fact that he lives in Great Missenden and she lives in Reading as clear-cut proof that she couldn't possibly have been involved (hmmm, I'm sure they meet each other on occasions besides Tuesday nights).
At one point we got a bit lost in the woods but Helen found the trail and wistfully cried, "Come to me", like a Siren singing unsuspecting sailors to steer their ships onto the rocks.
Further on we ran along a narrow path with a woody thicket on the left and more paddocks on the right which ended in a 4-back which was dis-obeyed(!!!) but the hash co-ordinator wasn't there and since this title is passed down through the male gene, his sister (me) let them-who-shall-not-be-named-and-shamed get away with it.
I have to say that it was a brilliant hash though, with a fair bit of shiggy, not as cold as expected and lots of fun. Matt's 5-mile long route clocked-up between 7.1 and 7.8 miles on the Sat Navs but we were still back in good time and headed into The Cross Keys for a warm welcome of lots of lovely chips and Roger followed the night's false theme by awarding the Tosca to Des (who was not present) for loosing and then finding his teeth on a hash a couple of weeks previous.
Thanks Matt for another thrilling episode of HWH3.