Hash 1514

It promised to be a long warm evening and my knee felt like it had recovered enough to get some actual running in; no danger of getting chilly. So far so normal for a hash night. But wait, none of the Farnham Common / Stoke Poges stalwarts were coming, aside from me and Cartwheel. That was unusual.

Talking of unusual, we weren't meeting in some charming little village pub with awkward parking, nor a bustling motorway services boozer. Or anything in between come to that. No, we were meeting in an industrial estate behind a couple of supermarkets in High Wycombe. This was considered to be so unusual that it led to a small flurry of communications on social media to confirm this was indeed the correct location. Why, I hear you ask, should we be meeting there? Was it the scenery? Seems unlikely. Ahh, is there a giant chip factory? Umm, no. Ohh, hang on this is just next to the Hare's surgery, that's it, isn't it? Mmmm ... maybe. A little bit. So the real reason, not  a giant chip factory, in fact  there was no food preparation at all, no the answer was a rather nice smallish beer factory. Yep, for this hash we had cut out the middle man (non sex specific intermediary??) and gone straight  to the source of beery goodness by running from a brewery. Two words (and one piece of punctuation) for you Tim, "Sheer" "Genius!"

So the pre-hash briefing told us we were looking a 3ish miles for the shorts with the longs expecting something like 5 and bit miles, but not a very big bit. The route had, we are assured, been beautifully laid on the Sunday, but by the time it was Tuesday, there was a little  shiggy and the route needed, well ... a gentle refresh. In the Hare's own words the route marking was going to be a bit haphazard. But we are hashers, and a bit haphazard doesn't put us off, so we exited the industrial estate in search of flour.

The route took us along a newly suburbanised street that seemed to have several block of near identical housing. I mean if you were getting a bit forgetful, as is not uncommon when we get older, or were a hard drinking student type you could easily end up at the wrong place. Still I am sure that's not the case here, and it has all been carefully planned. After trotting along the rather grandly named Hughenden Boulevard and discovering my knee was actually holding up ok, we entered  Hughenden Park.

From here on it was rather delightful hash through rolling green countryside on a "pleasant if not too warm after all" summer's evening.  The route took us past a couple of 'scenic' points, one of which was a small deviation from the path to what appeared to be a few small headstones. I must confess I didn't take a look at them, but the comments coming back seemed to reference Stephen King's Pet Sematary???

I think it was after we split (yes yes .. I should really be taking notes) that we went past the monument at Hughenden. Well if my recollection is correct, that's what the shorts did anyway. Now a couple of fun facts  on this section of the run, both from (a) Female Prerogative 1) the monument was built in secret by Disraeli's wife, not sure how she  managed to get the whacking great thing built in secret, but that's impressive and 2) pineapple weed is amazing.

After that we tracked towards Downley and I dare say we may well have  been able to see the Hare's house from there!! By this point we were well on our way back tracking through some gentle woodlands (where there was indeed some shiggy) before popping out near a playground; at least Cartwheel and Juno, on her first Hash, made use  of those facilities.

We then jogged through some suburban footpaths and, I suspect more by chance than planning, past the house of some of our more occasional hashers, Sarah and Carsten.  From here it was an uneventful canter back to Fisher's where they had some lovely local brews and help yourself softdrinks. As mentioned above, there is no kitchen, nor indeed a chip factory, however, our resourceful Hare didn't leave us go hungry. I think a little later than planned some warming cheesy goodness arrived by way of pizza!

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J O K E S

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“I like an escalator because an escalator can never break. It can only become stairs. There would never be an ‘Escalator Temporarily Out of Order’ sign, only ‘Escalator Temporarily Stairs’.”

“You know you’re working class when your TV is bigger than your book case."

“The first time I met my wife, I knew she was a keeper. She was wearing massive gloves.”

"As a kid I was made to walk the plank. We couldn’t afford a dog.”

“Here’s a picture of me with REM. That’s me in the corner.”

“‘What’s a couple?’ I asked my mum. She said, ‘Two or three’. Which probably explains why her marriage collapsed.”