Hash 1418

Damn it. It's Tuesday morning and no one has sent in the write up. Bloody slackers.

Let me see who I need to nag ... ah ...

Technically of course Fat Boy should be doing the write up but he says he doesn't think he should do it because he was in Aberdeen last Tuesday which I think is a pretty poor excuse but hey.

Anyway, we were back to the old Hash favourite The Wheel this week. Kevin (with assistance from the sorely missed Kerry) had set the trail on Sunday giving the flour plenty of time to bed in nicely.

We started off across the playing fields down towards those woods that once had a dead horse in .... or a dead deer or something very smelly anyway; I'm pretty sure that's how they're known by the locals. Given that those dead horse woods are notoriously muddy even at the height of summer (about 50cm I'd guess) the going was reasonably good to soft.

We flogged through those woods for a while and then dropped down to the middle of path from Downley to Hughenden (or vice versa if you're going the other way). At this point we bade farewell to the Shorts (bad farewell more like) who went down the hill towards the manor whilst the Longs headed up to the poorly named Downley.

Once we were in Common Wood then chaos was the disorder of the day. The track on my gps looks like a diagram explaining Brownian Motion. If the lines indicate the presence of subatomic particles though then they bloody well weren't flour.

As is the nature of random walks though we did eventually find our way out and up into Downley before dropping back down into Tinkers Wood. We then emerged by the Disraeli Monument which I now discover is a monument to Dizzie's dad and not him (the rascal).

A bit more Tinkering followed and then out in the open fields. By now it was raining properly, and at this point Whipping Boy declared that he wasn't having fun any more. I hadn't been aware before that it was ever supposed to be fun; I only come hashing to fulfil my probation agreement.

Once we got to the other side of Coates Lane it was back into the woods for a slightly precarious path back down towards Hughenden whereupon Dick's chimney was revealed. I think we can all agree it really is outstanding.

After a suitable pause for admiration it was back up through the woods by the car parks before turning left to climb back up to Naphill. We emerged onto Louches Lane where we splashed happily through the puddles (past my friend Kelly's old house - hi Kelly!) with only minor confusion about where the footpath went before once again crossing the playing fields back towards the welcoming Wheel.

The pub as usual came up trumps. I was persuaded to purchase a pint of Titter Ye Not by the bar staff telling me that it was an 'old fashioned brown ale' which is just the kind of snappy marketing that's going to the get the kids to ditch their alcho-pops. There was a mountain of bread and chips - in fact there was were still some there when I left (I'm sure Mike will have put the extra effort in to make sure they were finished of course).

We all (even Aaron) joined in a rousing chorus of Happy Birthday for Jess and stuffed our faces with cake.

Dry and stuffed with chips, cake and brown ale I began to see the attraction of the whole business. Perhaps the brown ale only tasted so good because of the running around lost in the woods in the rain - might be nice to try an experiment where we skip that bit and just head straight for the pub one day.

Thanks Kev.