Hash 1350

Red and yellow and pink and green, purple and orange and blue, I can sing a rainbow…………

Well actually they were more like magenta, scarlet, cream, lilac, mauve, burnt umber, raspberry ripple, apricot soufflé …..……that was the rhododendrons of course not the Hasher's tee shirts (they're more psychedelic).

It was more like a nature ramble last Tuesday. We set off across the main road in our crocodile formation and speedily up a lane. Kevin drew my attention to a rather tall silver fir tree, the first of many trees on this 'ramble'. However, this was no ramble more like a race! Having completed the BUPA 10000 the day before with Roz, my pacemaker, I wasn't up to racing pace today and Ken, Paul and I made a pact to slow the pack down.

We eventually caught up at a check after nearly a mile and entered Langley Park. There we spotted an On Inn. Surely not already. No such luck. "Ignore that" said our hares that's for later. Soon a long short split was announced with cheers from the shorties, but yet again unnoticed by Livvy who seems to go long each week by default! She loves the challenge really. Her excuse for wanting to go short was the weather, but it was a perfect evening for hashing, dry, with no shiggy and well manicured footpaths and that's the truth for all you Hasher's who didn't turn up.

If the longs had slowed down I could have told you more about the Pinewood Film crew, Tudors and Stuarts, Capability Brown, Langley Mansion (all wrapped up to emerge as a luxury hotel in the future), views of Windsor Castle, wooden sculptures ('kernal of an idea'), trees like the magnificent Sequoiadendron giganteum and how many cygnets the swans had on the lake. D'for tried to count them for me but nearly got eaten by mummy or daddy swan for his trouble. Question 'How do you tell a male swan from a female swan,?' Answers on a postcard please to GM.

We dashed through the arboretum at a pace. "I think that's a place with lots of trees" a comment was made by an intellectual amongst us. Not much time to look up as we crossed a Monet type bridge. I had a sneaky peek and the Sequoias are huuuuge! Perhaps that's why they're called Giant!

Alan, our hare, who seems to know his way around so well, apparently got lost here at the age of 7. He sat on a tree stump at this very check, a junction of 5 paths and waited for his mum to find him, on the assumption all paths led to him. Good job he was found as now a fine tree was standing in place of the stump.
After the tour of the lake, it was deja-vu and back in the arboretum, you know the place with the trees, only this time it seemed full of the aforementioned rhodys. Or was it actually the Temple Gardens?

With the occasional pause at a check, if you weren't checking, you could admire the range of colours, absolutely lovely. On on, no time to dally and look for Windsor Castle on the horizon. Concentrate now, we are following the number One's set in flour. But there's a number two, that's for later. OK. So round and round we went seemingly in circles but the ones and twos began to make sense, so we survived the maze and eventually emerged back at the edge of the park and the On Inn. Except it wasn't an Inn, it was Nita and Anna's Burger Bar.

What a novel idea.

With Hawkeye's Shakesbeer's Midsummer's Lightning Dream beer, oodles of burgers and chips, tea, coffee, hot chocolate, in cosy surroundings, who would have known we were in the middle of a field not a pub. Many thanks to our generous hares, Alan and Sandra for the nosh and to Nita and Anna for opening just for us mad lot.

We welcomed Lucy on her '41' st hash - a short walk followed by nosh in the pub up the road. Many broody hashers opted for a cuddle, come on Andy time to get some practice in for November. Congrats to Andy and Sarah.

Also congrats to Ian for 200 runs and for converting a pub to a home or was it the other way round? The GM sounded confused.

By the way Ken and Paul, I think we failed in our mission. We were back at 9pm and Alan boasted 9.1k as predicted! 12 minute miles approx.!!
Alan had also pointed out the silver fir to me, it was actually a phone mast in disguise.

The beer celebrates the 400th anniversary of a certain playwright and seemed to sink down mouths quite readily not down sink! You need to read the poster to get the drift/draft of the origins of said brew.

Wouldn't have missed this novel hash for the world!