The First one back after the holidays…
…or not, for this year hashing had continued unabated throughout the festive period. 14 assembled for Shunter’s New Year Masterpiece, a few sick notes had been submitted on forehand, so we were mildly thin on the ground, but enthusiastic nonetheless. A well kitted out Labradoodle provided batteries and head torches for the disorganised, challenging Search and Rescue’s well established hegemony on catering for the unprepared.
Why, oh why, do we have to start every Scotsman’s Pack hash by going up that dreadful hill? On the bright side we passed Little John’s grave which was on my ‘must see in Hathersage’ list.
We soon came across our first challenging and boggy check, hashers were off in all directions, barring the obvious, fortunately our learned Prof soon showed us the way and we started our long ascent. It was noted that The Apprentice seemed to have boundless energy and enthusiasm for checking and was fairly quick on his feet…a replacement for Skidmarks perhaps??
It was a tough ascent and the fact that it took place early only heightened suspicions that Shunter would put another one in. The route finally began to level out and Shunter added in some heather bashing for the sake of tradition, i.e. Desperado once did it on the first hash of the New year. Alas nothing good ever comes from wading through heather and a no doubt unplanned abrupt righthand turn took us towards The Dale. A bit of road running harmed no one, that night at least, and was a welcome relief from the bog.
Murmurings of Stanage Edge began and sure enough the next check took us left and towards Ringinglow road. Once across Ringinglow, Shunter set a check that fooled no one and we all took the Tiger Line (golf term) to the edge. ‘Would there be snacks at the trig point’ wondered one overoptimistic hasher, ‘Perhaps he has set up a buffet in Robin Hood’s Cave’ speculated another, ‘That cave is full of sh*t’ summarised a third. ‘I once sheltered from a storm in there’ said Smittie.
But no, our dreams would not come true, instead our dear hare took us most of the way across the top of the edge, a feat which is arduous in daylight and inspires only hare-icidal sentiments at night. There was apparently some enthusiasm to find the cave still and small splinter groups could be seen climbing down then climbing back up.
Not soon enough did we begin to turn down, treatless and kind of back towards Hathersage, by this time the Hashers were well spread out.
After heading through the plantation, we were joined by special guest Crystal Tips who was on her bike due to injury, she uttered some words of encouragement to each Hasher as they cross North Lees Lane and headed into the woods. It was later found out in the pub that CT’s injury was toilet visit related a bit like CMs, strange coincidence and equally strange thing to put in a report but I need the column inches.
By this time I was all alone, I could hear few shouts of on on both ahead and behind with accompanying head torch glows, other than that it was a long lonely run back to the Pack, where my fellow car poolers were waiting for the key.
A bout of aggressive diary filling took place and we are now scheduled up to the end of May. There was talk of compensating Fast Eddie’s £1.59 total diary expenditure (2019 & 2020) by an evening’s free use of the Hash Barbecue / oil drum. Crystal tips elaborated on her injury and it seems she shares some commonalities with captain Morgan.
On on,
Sticky Shaft
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