After last week's inflatable madness, it was back to normal, and a rather select group of hashers circled up at Dane's Wood. A bunch of us were late arriving, including Rocky and I, beaten even by Mr "Always-comes-2-late" himself, Tampa. There was a virgin, Wayne who'd helped Fancy Licker lay the trail - and she'd taught him everything she knew about hashing while laying yesterday!
After most of us headed off in the wrong direction at the beginning, the longs took a trip round the very edge of the wood - where most of the marks were missing. And that is when the unfortunate event happened. I needed a wee, and Rocky managed to loose the rest of the pack. The result was, that by the next check, he was nowhere to be seen. The pack did a great job of splitting up to search for him, and Mad Max and I could hear him responding to our shouts. We found him very quickly (a couple out walking asked whether this was my DAUGHTER!), but it took much longer to find everyone else who'd gone searching. Including Twin Peaks and Child Catcher: they'd looped back to the car park. All this excitement, and only 1/2 mile into the trail!
With CC and TP still missing, we headed along the lane up to the farm, and along a track to the second long-short. The long was all a bit confusing! We took the track down to the church, and spent a few minutes searching for the trail. We discovered that it went back towards the farm, but then Faceplant led us back through the gate across the fields towards where we had come. The hare called us back: "Why are you going that way?", "Because there are marks", "That may be the case, but its not that way!" The trail actually continued along the lane, over the road bridge, and we were supposed to cross the river and come back again by foot on the other side. It all got a bit muddled, and only Bull Bait managed to follow the marks properly. Then we headed back, through said gate, back to join the shorts. I presume this back tracking was why our hare had asked "Is a hash allowed to go back on itself, other than for a haha?" on facebook just yesterday!
By this point, we were a long way behind the shorts - and we had a long slog up the hill behind Killerton, during which Rocky and I both needed a wee (my second of the trail - must be getting old), up to the sweetie stop (below).
There were various rumours of hashers cutting the trail short (including Splat!), and Fancy promised us a much simpler trail from now on. Indeed it was, as we came down through the main grounds of Killerton House, lots of checks, but eventually headed parallel to the lane up towards the on home.
Lots of fines this week, as Hobgoblin wore his Elton John glasses in participation for the concert at Westpoint tonight.
Next week we're at Ullacombe Farm, near Haytor / Bovey Tracey (map). If you'd like to join the hash table for roast lunch, please let Coat Check know, or via the facebook event page. Don't forget to RATE THE HASH!
