Again due to the foot and mouth disease this was a town and beach hash laid by Pete Colgate and Dave Enticott who stepped in at a moments notice to save the Hash!
Well done those hashers...
Although the rain had stopped for a short while it was still a cold day with only a couple of hardy individuals daring to show a leg and run in shorts.
The JMs for once made short work of the intro and off we were heading out of the car park and onto a housing estate. After finding no flour at all (even though the hares had used nearly half of a 1Kg bag) a couple of us who had run the Middleton beach run tried to use local knowledge to find the trail. With a tiny bit of assistance from a Hare this was achieved and the pack followed the flour across some pretty roads doubling back now and then, over running the trail now and then, until the inevitable happened and we were onto the beach. I know it was the beach because that is where the wet stuff is that wipes away hash trails (or so the hares tried to make us believe).
It was at this point that a particularly nasty hares let us run to a check far in the distance and then when misguided members of the pack called us back, let us run all the way back until we rejoined the pack, only to be told that we were right in the first place!! However Mussolini (who has taken to carrying the whip all the way around on every hash??) had decided laziness to be the better part of common sense and had stayed put rather than waste that valuable energy.
So ever onward through the wilds on Elmer where we saw small shanty shacks next to expensive new houses - a very strange mix. We seemed to double back to the main road and I was unlucky enough to find myself on yet another falsie before the pack called us back and we crossed the road to run around another housing estate. It seems strange but after a while the houses seem to look more alike than the trees in the woods usually do. But now the pack had begun to get the feel of the homeward trail. Joyce and I were staggered to find that after we suggested a regroup as the pack had begun to spread, a long standing hasher decided to check it out in any case not once but twice as he thought he knew the way home!!!
So Dave Homerun Barclay earned his name and our shouted insults (but it didnt matter as he was so far ahead he did not hear them! One more check and then finally the On Inn. It was interesting to note that one of the JMs was seen to be a SCB claiming that he had become lost and only seen the pack ahead as we emerged from a side turning (Do we believe him?).
The pack returned and then had to award the hashit to Mike Brown for wearing odd socks (a mistake or a fashion statement?) without the honoured hashit as James Whispers de Bounville had not turned up after being awarded it last time. Nobody noticed for a while as his On Ons are usually silent anyway. Mike Brown had also forgotton the spare so it was left to the JMs to use the whip to throttle the poor wretch rather than present the hashit.

An excellent run considering the lack of time and the restrictions on locations. Well done the hares.
It seems that of late the runs are getting back to the hour or thereabouts and newcomers will probably not be frightened off. Good to see the Colonel there to offer moral support (can a hasher offer MORAL support?)

Humble Scribe

Mike Brown has put together the French Hash so please arrange it all with him.