Hash 1300

It was a hot day, and the evening was set to stay that way. We set off filling our car with dogs and hashers on route, arriving at the car park just as someone was leaving a prime spot which I nabbed. Matt was adding others into parking slots, Nikki wound down the window in her cabriolet to speak to him.

To ease the overheating problem the Hare had tweaked the Hash rules for the evening to make it a race, or more exactly 3 races: - T1 T2 and T3.

A competitive edge was what we were lacking between the shorts and longs! The briefing ended with a strong hint to check out the path on the opposite side of the pub garden, which we promptly did, finding fresh flour blobs up a vertiginous climb.

The flour was set on both sides of the track, so a number of FRBs had to be called back for the on backs which felt numerous. A short long split was passed, the shorts turning left through a gate, short cutting to T1, the race was on!

Oh no shorts in front of us, the longs had lost, but no, T1 was not there. Our routes had rejoined before this strangely marked super size check circle had been found. Regrouping at it, the Hare said we could check it out when the last of the shorts had arrived (hashing is not competitive, but the Longs were definitely in the lead!).

At this point lots of scribes state place names and directions etc, but it was very hot and I didn't have a clue where I was, so we followed the flour on a road through some woods.

The next short long split was just after a gate and we were once again racing toward T2. It was in this section that a new hash formation was formed, it was prompted by a field of Heifers (more curious than hostile) but a protective flank was formed around Jo our Bovinophobic 
brethren. As we used this formation up the field, one of the many hills, suggestions were made on possible key words to increase the speed and effectiveness of our cow defence system, "we could Release the Hawk Eye" that sounds like a missile, we could roll him down the hill, he would be fine, he has metal leg bracing anyway. During the on backs, the snippets of Roger's conversations, seemed to be on profuse and diverse subjects, oh the rich tapestry of hashing.

Typing of overheard things, Helens comment "this is where the shorts come down" did raise a few eyebrows.

Reaching T2 a note was added: - 'Long Gone' in case we were in front of the shorts, although it was rumoured voices had been heard ahead of us. This could have been the heat getting to us, and I for one, did envy the dogs their drinks and even swims in various water troughs. Toward the end Hawkeye appeared 'well watered' I don't know if he had found a trough or tap? But he did wash himself off in the car park when we got back.

Sooper clocked the furthest, with a total of 8.63 very hot miles, including over 1000ft of climb, but all very pleasant with good views of the sunset and full moon.

In the hostelry garden several T shirts where presented: - 400 to Jo, 666 to Audrey, and a massive 950 to Gerry.