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Once Paul and Steve had parked their cars and sauntered over we totalled 22 souls. Mr Freeman apologised for his JM for choosing another (boozing) event and then welcomed Dave Princept and Bernie Oates who were visiting from the City of London. Running on grass and mud would be a weird experience for them but in the event they coped very well.

Joyce did the usual hares speech and then we were away. Check after check were found in short order through woods with well drained sandy ground. Steve was doing nearly every false trail at break neck speed. After a short regroup we came to the gravel pit with a trail leading to waters edge. The next mark was on a car tyre floating in the lake with another on a small island 10m away. Dave gamely followed the trail, island hopping until well off-shore encouraging the pack to follow by this time, of course, he was standing on a falsie.

We circumnavigated the lake with some wet bits passing by a crocodile (or was it an alligator). The hares tried to make us think that it was a log with cardboard teeth and tennis ball eyes - a likely story!

We proceeded to a brick paved arena which was the site of the former Whites Brick Kiln works and thence to yet another lake with a clear trail to the waters edge with a check on the far bank Dave waded to mid-lake none followed.

After that the Hares spotted the pack losing their ability to spot the trail and were led to the on-in.

On-pres then went through the candidates for the hashit; Dave for calling on at the falsies; Selwyn for his clean shoes; but the award went to this scribe for forgetting his hashing slippers and having to wear his school shoes both on the hash and in the pub.

We retired to the Half Moon Inn where Mike Brown greeted us, red faced, explaining he had intended to run but forgot his map and could not remember where the start was, mistook Petworth for Petersfied and got stuck in Trottens one way system?!. He will bring his own bog seat next time. Our group then split in two; some were interested in filling their stomachs while others were more interested in solving problems connected with the US political system

Many thanks Joyce and her team for choosing such an ideal venue and laying an excellent trail that all enjoyed very much indeed.

Bruce.