Run	Date	Hare(s)	Description	MapRef	1:50000	1:25000	1:10000	More
975	2022-01-16 11:00	Popeye Snake Charmer and Pancsi	Havant Thicket	SU724101

You have to be crazy to want to go running around in Havant Thicket at this time of the year. This must be why we gathered there on a bright but cool morning, prepared for a good dose of shiggy, and welcomed by three Hares and a dog all caked in slowly setting slurry.

Bika had brought along Lowawatha (Portsmouth HHH) with the aim of using the trail on the next evening for a bit of shiggy shimmying in the dark, which sounds vaguely erotic, but is not as good as mud wrestling, or so I am told.

Popeye, a Hare, left before we started, claiming to have a "family event" that he needed to attend, however we all knew that he just could not face another tour through the quagmire.

Some of the usual words were said, I can't recall exactly what, it's just that the dogs were making so much noise they became an embarrassment, so we had to start out in order to quieten them down. I think that our behaviour is likely to reinforce the dog's behaviour, i.e. they bark and howl and we set out. If we got together, waited for them to start howling and then packed up and went home without a run, they might stop howling, but we are not going to do that, so each time the noise gets louder, I wonder what Barbara Woodhouse would have said on this, "who?" you say, I apologise if you are too young to remember.

Anyway we set out West into Furzy Plain with Spiderman in the lead, his long Nordic pole glinting in the occasional sunshine.

You see, if you try and run on the trail you are likely to go A over T on the slithery mud, so you run on slightly firmer soil to the left or the right and get an eye poked out by a hazel twig, even if it misses your eye it still leaves a little round bruise on your forehead.

To add insult to injury Spiderman's brief time at the head of the pack, came to an end when we encountered a Fish Hook that caught himself, Olive Oyl, Kinky, and Bambi.

Relief was at hand as we took the second turn on the right, North into Long Wood and onto a mud free surface with Olive Oyl somehow back in front after a spirited sprint from the rear only to hit another fish hook along with Lowawatha and Bika.

Thus we reached the familiar Havant Thicket Triangle, where compasses go crazy, Hashers disappear without trace, UFOs are seen and the trail is hard to find. After some rather reluctant checking we found our way to the West past the pond where as a pup Aragorn nearly drowned after making a mad dash to snap at a butterfly.

Now another long drag on a path that gets progressively shiggier, culminating in pools of standing water at the Western boundary of the thicket. The hares were making use of every shiggy part they could find, as we now made a clockwise loop South towards Bell's copse and then North on the boundary path up Horsefoot Hill.

With shoes that now resembled clods of earth and weighing a ton Bambi found this gentle climb quite energy sapping, luckily Snake Charmer was at hand with words of encouragement, "come on lads, tis but a small mound" she said, we looked up and she was right, it was a small mound with a little copse on top, "you will have no trouble mounting it" she added, and she was right, we had no trouble mounting it, although we all had a short rest at the end of our exertion.

From this relative height we could have just followed the boundary trail back to the chariots and it would have been all over, but the hares had other ideas. They took us West again, all the way back to the check at the end of the shiggyest trail in the thicket in order that we could have the pleasure of running it in the opposite direction to reach the triangle again.

Now it was almost all over as we made our way just North of Long Wood and through the cluster of ponds to reach the On-In after one hour and fifteen minutes of some of the shiggiest hashing available in Hampshire.

At the circle, we thanked the hares (one in absentia) and were mulling over the morning's experience when suddenly Thumper, who was moving closer to hear better, stumbled, and in her attempt to remain upright grasped Prancer around the waist and executed a perfect rugby tackle, like what we were taught in school. The end result was that Prancer was left with trousers at half mast. Accordingly he was presented with the Hash-It for exposing himself.

Finally the "Hasher of the year" trophy seat was presented to Bambi, a great honour, before some retreated to The Castle Inn, Rowland's Castle while others went home to scrape the shiggy from between their wet and wrinkled toes.

On – On ! Bambi

See: Walkers Track ... AND ... photos by Bambi