After squeezing in riding a horse between leaving work and getting to the hash we arrived a little late – just in time to see the pack departing down the road. I had suggested to Aaron that perhaps we should have missed the hash for once so I had time to ride both the horses and not be in such a rush. Aaron, however, had remembered our obligation to be scribe this week (I'm sure our hash was much longer ago than just last week!) so amazingly wouldn't have taken the opportunity to get out of running, much to Gerry's relief.
We soon caught up with the pack at a bottleneck of 2 stiles and got to admire Aud's homage to the 80's in glorious multi-coloured neon. Once over the stiles we headed across fields to the lane where Simon, Tash and Jess were admiring some very cute little piggy's. Rumour has it that Jess said they stank!
Down the lane we went and acros
s another field to the first of several very slippery bits of the hash. Sooper Cooper did the honourable thing and warned us all of the danger by slipping into nice muddy moose – more muddy clothes to wash. Here I met Rob's lovely dog Merlin, who Poppy promptly told off, grumpy little madam. Although I didn't envy Rob trying to negotiate slippery descent with a big dog on a lead – though holding onto Merlin's harness to keep me upright did look very tempting.
We crossed the road and admired some Alpaca's whilst regrouping for the long / short split. The shorts got sent up the steep hill to Speen while the longs continued along the valley through the fields of the home of rest for horses. From here on the hash was a blur of shiggy, shiggy, shiggy, some hills, more shiggy, slippery mud, more shiggy, hashers moaning about hills and shiggy. Simon said we should blame the parents of hare (Zak). I think he might have been right as shortly after I commented to Nicky that I'd rather run on mud than tarmac we arrived at the worst shiggy yet and it just kept coming. Poor Hector had a tideline of mud – reminded me of my sisters first car, a 2 tone metro called Cuthbert! There is some logic to having a brown dog for hashing.
As we regrouped to brace ourselves for the next 'super slippery' section Mr Keats couldn't help his mischievous side playing with a branch overhead, unfortunately managing to poke Andy in the eye – thankfully he was ok but it does illustrate the hazards of being that tall ;-)
We continued and clung onto trees in a bid to stay up right until we eventually reached the long driveway back towards the pub. A few more on backs and another check until we found the very welcome On Inn.
Almost forgot to mention the curious sight of Andy & Kev skipping down the road in Speen holding hands. Thankfully I don't think any non-hashers saw so the secret is safe (ish) with us. We also scared the life out of one of Kev's & my colleagues as 30 odd head torches lit up their lounge on a dark Tuesday evening. He came out in his dressing gown to find out what on earth was going on!
Back at the pub we learnt that the walkers had a nice time waddling along with Sarah (apparently Sarah said she waddled so hopefully it's not a derogatory term) and that Hawkeye had managed to slip into a hawthorn bush on the short – ouch. We also got to enjoy sausages and chips (although Jess cruelly vinegar'd our bowl of chips), Kevin had numerous beers bought for him and Aaron got his 150 run T-Shirt.
A thoroughly muddy, sorry, enjoyable, run and good fodder. Fingers crossed for a dry week to kill the shiggy before next time!