Run	Date	Hare(s)	Description	MapRef	1:50000	1:25000	1:10000	More
944	2020-06-21 11:00	Bambi & Spiderman	Fishbourne Centre	SU832050

Even at its most exciting, Hashing can hardly be described as a contact sport, however a great deal of huffing and puffing combined with mingling through gates and over stiles with sweaty palms is like the Garden Of Eden to your average virus.

Have you tried opening or closing a gate with your elbows or teetering on the top step of a stile with you hand in your pockets while trying to get your leg over? well have you?.

Not to worry, these are things that you can practice at home before coming on a Hash, open or close doors with your elbows and try different ways to get your leg over using a settee, but not in front of the children, they will only laugh.

With all this in mind, a prearranged bubble of test hashers gathered at The Fishbourne Centre on a bright and very breezy morning to see if the aforementioned risks and dangers could be mitigated by a modified hash behaviour without destroying the joy.

Spiderman had planned a trail that attempted to provide wide passage or little used paths, he and Bambi had had no difficulty in laying this trail except finding it hard to be generous with the flour which until recently has been as available as powdered hen's teeth.

We bubbled up for the off, with really not much said, no jocular behaviour, a slight air of apprehension? or was it excitement?, in any event we were soon off and due North on Blackboy lane, well separated and above all alert.

The first part of this Hash was basically a meander through the burbs of Northern Fishbourne ending up on Clay Lane. Along the way the dynamics of distanced hashing became apparent, almost no banter when underway, the Hasher in front of you says something but it is annoyingly indistinct, consequently chatter while running was either non existent or peppered with what?, pardon or come again.

This seemed to be balanced by more natter at the checks.

The few people that we encountered, walking dogs or tidying their gardens seemed broadly supportive at least no one was hostile.

Traffic on the A27 looked normal for a Sunday morning as we crossed on Salthill Road with Snake Charmer and Belle little dots ahead and Kinky a big red dot playing catch-up after having fruitlessly explored the falsie to the new houses on Clay Lane East.

Unsurprisingly it was East next, on the footpath to Salthill Lodge and into an area that is fast disappearing under the developers dozers.

Before reaching the lodge a fish hook seemed to go well with an about turn and pass-by executed with military precision, all that winter square dancing has come in handy at last.

The check at the lodge proved to be a puzzler, we had to wait for Pink Flamingo anyway, she needed to go behind the bushes for something or other, and Kinky persisted in choosing the obvious falsie towards New Cottages.

The rest explored the field North towards Upper Rouse Copse where the deer and ticks roam.

The view from the lodge, of wheat fields and a spire on the horizon is soon to be improved by the addition of a new housing development in the foreground, no further comment.

While ruminating on this the bubble eventually found the hole in the hedge South alongside the brook and gently ripening oats.

A regroup near the A27 embankment was ignored, this led to a fragmentation of the bubble into bubblets which continued all the way to the On-In, no one getting lost, probably because the way in was well marked and well known.

It would have been nice to observe hashers negotiating the two vertiginous stiles either side of the rail track however Bambi was alone at this point and reached the On-In after one hour and fifteen minutes of pandemic hashing.

Presenting a Hash-It is of course out of the question, without using a ton of high alcohol sanitiser which Spiderman had forgotten to bring, anyway who has got the Hash-It?

So was this trial hash a success?. This is something that needs sober thought of which I am not capable as I write this.

On - On ! Bambi

See: SM's track ... AND ... photos