Run	Date	Hare(s)	Description	MapRef	1:50000	1:25000	1:10000	Aerial
688	2010-06-20	Canman & Silvia - JM's summer bash	Forestside and Stansted Village Hall	SU756121

The food started to gather in the cool kitchen of the hall on what was a sunny warm morning on the northern edge of Stansted forest.
The BBQ was carefully positioned in the garden and Treefeller set about firing it up while others attempted to impose some order on the mild chaos of pre-bash preparations.
At the appointed hour Canman called us to order to tell us about how William IV had popped his clogs on this day in 1837 leaving his niece Victoria to rule. There were apologies from JM Dogwhistle, The Ref and Nematoad and thanks to Sylvia who had helped lay the trail before rushing off to Southampton so that she could cast her vote in the election for a Polish president.

Eager to leave others to do the prep work in the kitchen the good sized pack started off south along the road looking for flour.
Initially the trail was easy to find as we were taken west along the northern boundary of the forest with many short falsies in a tempting southerly direction, and a noticeable surfeit of flour in contrast to the usual frugal style of Canman which lead us to conclude that Sylvia had been very active.

Eventually we arrived at the big wooden bench at the north west corner and were forced to spread out on all the many paths available from this point which are a hares wet dream.
Cath and Brylcream were fortunate to find the long true trail due south as the rest returned from all points of the compass.
I must admit that from this point on the trail managed to defeat my sense of direction; I know that it was good enough to keep us all together while at the same time giving most of the pack a turn at the front.
Essentially it was a trail threaded around the clear ride that runs from north west to south east and then heading north parallel to the road back to the hall.

Near the end there was a sneaky little jink in the trail, a little clockwise loop to the west of the road however most of the pack managed to ignore it by overrunning the northerly falsie much to Canman's dismay.
I should mention, because they threatened nastiness, that Panda, Flash, Old Faithful, Mussolini and Pancsi did follow the true trail.

We arrived at the Polish DOM mark, being Sylvia's version of On-In after just under one hour of most enjoyable forest hashing.

Soon we were piling in to food and drink from a kitchen that had been organised while we were busy enjoying ourselves.
Flash thanked Canman and Sylvia for laying such a good trail, Canman thanked all the people that had helped to make the bash so enjoyable, especially Treefeller for organising the BBQ and grilling the meat, most ably assisted by the ever cool Pru.
The Hash-It was awarded to Sylvia in absentia after considering nominations for Dogwhistle for being missing, and Hash Angel supposedly for running so well.
Then the customary draw for the many raffle prizes started, Canman soon handing over the bag of numbers to an eager Kermit.

That was that then, well not quite, mild chaos returned as everyone wanted to do something to help clear up. Folding tables, cooling and emptying the BBQ, who's bowl is this ?, that's my table cloth, can someone boil some water, where does this go?, someone take this bread, until finally locking up and hoping everything was switched off.
I could attempt a list of thanks for all the chores, taking the dosh, folding the raffle tickets, setting out the food, clearing up, washing, clearing rubbish etc, however to avoid missing out a contribution I simply thank everyone who helped make such a memorable day.

Bambi.