Run	Date	Hare(s)	Description	MapRef	1:50000	1:25000	1:10000	More
1007	2023-04-23 11:00	Sausage Lottery and Slightly Disappointing - St George's fighting dragons!	Madehurst Houghton Forest	SU997105

This is April, it rains, then it doesn't, then it does. Laying a trail the day before is like playing Russian Roulette, except all the chambers save one have a live round. Consequently the hares needed to "refresh" the slight remaining stains of flour. To make matters worse, Slightly Disappointing had managed to break a big toe and was in agony at every stride, thus leaving Sausage Lottery to head out ahead of the pack armed with lashings of fresh trail.

This was St George's day, so some of the pack arrived in celebratory garb, although I am not quite sure how Dr Blood imagined that the dragon had been clubbed to death, (Editor has removed an offensive remark here related to the death of baby seals in Canada).

We had two visitors, a regular Camping Gaz from Guildford HHH, and a first time visit from Bugle Bum, who has un-emigrated from Spain.

In the slowly increasing downpour, with a throbbing toe, our hare tried to kill time to give the other a good lead, by going over the trail marks. There was a lot to say, as we were to look out for black dog poo bags near each check, containing a little plastic model of a dragon or knight or both.

I know what you are thinking, and we thought the same, what if there are any bags around with their intended contents?, a risk we had to take apparently.

Just after all of this had been revealed, Bika arrived, late, and an excuse for further delay presented itself. Thus, after an extraordinarily long pre-amble, we set out West inside the forest but parallel to the Madehurst road and then North West up The Denture almost all the way to Monarch's Way.

Along the way there was a small Westerly detour to take in an early flowering bluebell glade, no sign of flour here, but nowhere else to go except back to the main trail.

At each Check there was a frantic search for the poo bag, as it brought out a normally subdued competitive trait among the pack members. It certainly worked well as mechanism for keeping us together.

Now we headed South East and the East into the valley below Langham Wood, on the way Old Faithful located a "real" poo bag, the only one that turned up, which was surprising since we normally see quite a few, forlornly hanging on bushes waiting for their depositors never to return.

There was some pinging of WhatsApp, it was Sausage letting us know that she had beaten us back to the chariots, smug git. She then came back to join us, smugger git, because we were stuck looking for a disappeared poo bag.

We gave up, and as time was racing on, accepted a hint that took us up the slope towards Whiteways Lodge and then South East along the contour below the ridge, tall pines, and slippery wet roots, every footfall dicing with death, or at least a broken toe.

A low duck under a fallen tree laden with wet claggy ivy served as the finale to this run as we descended out of rainforest to the chariots after one hour and twenty minutes of wet poo bag searching, to find that the hares had prepared a table laden with munchies and grog, which we set about with relish.

There were loads of reasons for down downs at the circle, and it was a joy to see so many doses of raspberry flavoured cider (I think) being consumed with aplomb. The Ref had managed to collect four poo bags, Old Faithful a "real" one, our visitors, etc. the Hash-It was given to Camping Gaz, the reason escapes me now.

Many returned home to dry out, a small band retired to The Old Stables where we received a warm welcome.

On-On Bambi

Bambi's track ... AND ... photos byBambi