Run	Date	Hare(s)	Description	MapRef	1:50000	1:25000	1:10000	Aerial
701	2010-12-19	Brylcream - bring your Santa hat/outfit. Ho ho ho!	Emsworth Hermitage Bramley Gardens	SU756058

Only the bravest and forgetful turned out for this one, those remembering the run at Barnham earlier this year and the associated rear end bruising stayed safely at home.
Just more than two handfuls of souls gathered in freezing conditions under a leaden sky to be greeted by the ever cheerful Brylcream who admitted that he had never laid a trail before.
Bika was there and had hoped to assist however I think that due to the adverse conditions he had been unable to run around the night before and help place the chalk marks on posts and walls that were necessary as flour was going to be useless on the snow and ice.
There was some relief that the conditions had prevented Canman from receiving his newspaper thus sparing us the usual history lesson allowing us to get moving more quickly, in any case we would not have heard him over the noise of Pancsi's knees knocking together beneath the flimsy shorts he was wearing.

The early part of the trail took us out on to the deep, crisp and even snow covered fields to the east of Hermitage where early onset snow blindness hampered the front runners in their search for little chalk arrows.
We then abruptly headed south, crossing the main road with Flash and Old Faithful managing to stay upright and ahead of the rest. A falsie on the footpath east to Prinstead left OF well behind but then a check and falsie tempting us into the houses north of New Farm meant that we were all together again to cross the byroad west and into the maze of paths in the Marina.
Even though the trail from the check in the Marina was easy to find and well marked somehow we managed to make a bit of a pig's ear of it, eventually finding our way out to be along that narrow causeway with water on both sides that leads north to the eastern suburbs of Emsworth.
Splasher was especially nervous as we made our way along this bit as some have a tendency to chuck him in any big puddles that we come across.

Next, a dash through the underpass saw us heading north towards the gasometer and raised hopes that we would soon turn east for home, but no such luck as we headed west again through the churchyard and then south back towards the harbour, stopping only when we arrived at the edge of the wet salty bit.
There seemed no way out of here until the hare mentioned that tide tables had been consulted, this lead Pancsi to discover the marks along the harbour wall that took us over to the Mill Pond and dry land again.
The last little trick up Brylcream's sleeve was that we soon found ourselves back at the eastern edge of Emsworth where the marks had been expertly rearranged to take us on-in past The Sussex Brewery after one hour and eight minutes of memorable hashing.

The snow was just starting to fall again while Canman thanked Brylcream for an excellent virgin trail and awarded the Hash-It to Splasher for being too Ba-Humbug! to put up any Christmas decorations this year.
Such was our haste draw proceedings to a close that we failed to notice that Dr Blood and Spiderman were still out there, only arriving back in time to join the rest in the short walk back to the aforementioned hostelry.

Bambi.