#1163 Crown & Glove

#1163 Crown & Glove, Stannington; Fast Eddie

It might have been a Full Moon but we departed in a flurry of sleet. It was not a night for the  fainthearted but we had assembled a Dirty Dozen including guest, DJ Shorty, aka Little Smittie. The trail was picked up heading downhill towards Nethergate and Rivelin Valley and a path that your scribe had not seen before, coming out at the bottom of Coppice Lane. Inevitably the trail disappeared up this mountain pass and back within spitting distance of the pub before heading west towards Rails. At this point Shunter noticed some bizarre mincing from the guest DJ whom he anointed as Riverdance, a most appropriate handle forthwith.

Soon we were plodging through the sort of mud that has become familiar during our current “wet season”, heading over the top then down past the former Dyson Brickworks, now an incongruous looking estate of posh houses plonked in the Green Belt . Did anyone notice that the stream of water running down our trail was coming from the gaping mouth of the old ganister mine which once supplied the brickworks? Did anyone care? Hard to tell, as the main pack was already waiting at the top of Brookside Bank. Just as well, because this gave the late-arriving Tideswell Two, Hannah and Chris, time to catch up. Then we found the real Hash Rest in what appeared to be someone’s back garden; another first for the Hash?

By now the front runners were convinced that this was this going to be a road run so they all ignored the track through Our Cow Molly. Did the hare arrange a welcoming party with ice creams all round in the Ironman spirit? Such light hearted thoughts were soon abandoned in favour of those about what happened to Molly in later life? Our Beefburger Molly perhaps? A cavalry charge across open ground was led by the Apprentice and brought us to the familiar downwards slope of Storrs Lane. Looking up you could see the new street lights along Stopes Road like a string of pearls, a highway engineers dream to serve the new blot on the landscape at the former brickworks.

But you had to get there first and then up the further slope and across the field to the Hash Home, which is how Madge and Sticky Shaft somehow contrived to prove the biblical expression that The First Shall Be Last.

An 8.6 K run which is 5.3 straight bananas. Back at the pub by 9.10 PM. And to all you stay at home hashers the rain stopped just long enough for the job to be done, as normal. Ideal hashing. N.B.

On on
Smittie