Here is a map showing locations of some of the WLH runs during 2016.  Clicking on a run location will allow you to view the trail for that run.

Hopefully this will be helpful if you are a hare trying to decide where to set your next trail.

The hash preamble started with a frank exchange of views between Pickled Fart and Dingo.  The email exchange was conducted in the public domain, so was available to those who use and look at the comment section of the website.  I am not sure if that many use this function.  No doubt the people who engaged in this spat felt better for it. However the use of the comments function may be beyond the capacity of many hashers.  Nevertheless it is good to see the innovative use the site.

It was the Dr Who run <<cue the Dr Who music>>, the world’s longest running science fiction TV programme.  Well it is good to know that it has now been adopted by the world’s most populous running/drinking club.  We are assured that the Doctor appears internationally, on BBC entertainment (the money making part of the BBC).  The hash, being an international organisations had 2 participants had flown in from the USA, that afternoon, to attend the Dr Who conference.  Conference attendance, I understand, was a sell-out, but not in the 43 seconds (as was reported for the return Python gig). 

Maintaining the Dr Who theme, Stayover arrived with his roll of aluminium foil, a strange cultural habit of people coming from north of Hadrian’s wall?  Well why not?  He is probably an avid Great British Bake off fan.  Stayover and another hasher created a mask.  The mask was supposed to make them look like cybermen.  It merely created the effect of a person who had been severely burnt; caused excessive reading of News International’s output?  The masks caused angst among London’s general populace. Alternatively had stayover got Dr Who and Alexander Dumas?  Was he the man in the iron mask?  Or had Dr Who been confused with the wizard of Oz?  He and his colleague were masquerading as the “Tin man”, who allegedly had no brain…….I leave it to hashers to make their own decisions. 

In keeping with the Dr Who theme, the hare Love Deuce, arrived with 2 daleks; whacker and 2 AM. But hashers were left to wonder, where was the plunger?  With no plunger, there had been an apparent mastectomy, becoming very fashionable with men and their manbo8bs.  There was a gun, of sorts, it was short and floppy.  It appears that the daleks had a case of brewer’s drupe, notwithstanding the short barrel.  Clearly Whacker and 2 AM had been indulging in excessive social drinking. As daleks they had been emasculated.  I understand that wearing these Dalek outfits was a torrid experience; according to Whacker the build-up of sweat was bad, well that’s a positive, as they may be a commensurate increase in thirst. 

No Dr Who is complete without a TARDIS.  Immediately outside Earls Court Tube station is a “Time and Relative Dimension in Space”device (TARDIS to the non-cognoscenti). To earthlings and hashers this structure may also be known as a Police, public call box.  A structure used by the“Girls and Boys in blue”.  Conveniently, but not arranged by Love Deuce, (Actually, Scribe LD did organise this through Met Police!! – Dingo) a policeman was on hand to open the TARDIS so we can have a look inside.  What is in there?  Well it stored a lot of stuff, but it did have a wash basin and other facilities. 

The run was set by Love Deuce, around Hyde park and its environs, including a yet to be opened fayre, complete with a large Ferris wheel and a radio mast topped with an illuminated white knob.  Makes up for the hashers emasculated daleks.  There was a drink stop of chili vodka and maggots (wine gums soaked in Vodka). Excellent; on inn.

The scribe did not stay for the down down, so sinners have not been mentioned.  It appears that a comment on campanology may have gone un-noticed, but a few chimed in.  Surprising really, as many hashers either work within earshot of Big Ben or from Bow Bells. 

Hobo

Hare Yorkie

A night of almost.  Its almost 7:15, there is no sign of the hare and almost no-one notices. The Hare arrives, time passes, and almost everyone is quite happy to stay in the pub until the hare nudges the GM, at which point almost everyone shambles outside into the cold night, leaving a few lingering inside the pub until the run actually gets going.

We’re off.  Down to the canal and turn left, not the way we usually run from this pub. We almost like the idea until we get to the first false trail mark and have to go all the way back.

Then it’s down the tow path the normal way toward the gate we almost always go through and which almost half of the pack runs past, despite there being no trail that way.  Eventually, we all get together again in the fields where almost all of us get caught up in more false trails – some of the Hare’s making and some of our own.

It was great being off the hard surface and into grass, so rare in a city based Hash.  There was less light pollution, we were bathed in light from the moon in its Waxing Gibbons phase, and often dazzled by the arc lights some of us wore on our heads.  One feature of these light conditions is that flour can take on the colour of its surroundings and become almost invisible, which is why almost all of the pack ended up having to follow the Hare while also enjoying the shiggy.

Horsenden Hill looms.  We almost always run up it, so the Hare has cannily set the trail around it for a change.  This doesn’t stop some of the pack, including Pope, from running up it on the off chance of spotting a trail at the top while the rest of the pack struggles with disbelief and the above lighting conditions until , finally, salvation appears in the form of a road and we can make out the run markings again.

From then on, it was an on street trail, set with the guile of an experienced Hare who knows the area well.  It was never the right option to take the “obvious” exit from a check and almost all of the pack were unaware of how far they had to go until they were almost Home, thanks to the back streets and footpaths used. Spirits were raised as “The Black Horse” came into view, and crushed when we realised it was the wrong “Black Horse”.

Back at the pub, after a decent interval, Wacker presided over the Circle and awarded down downs to:

The Hare, Yorkie;

Love Deuce, for Twerking (“A sacred, traditional practice originating from the Amhara tribe. The act of twerking occurs when one’s legs move in such a way that causes the buttocks to resonate, connecting the participant with cosmic energy. It can be used as an act of communication and also can allow the user to communicate with the dead.” (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=twerking)) on the trail;

Stay Over, for Minding the Step;

Tash, for Next Week;

F Shakespeare for reminding us that there was an old brothel on the trail – to which his after dd comment was that the Pride tasted like the whore’s mouth (before or after? We never got to find out);

Tinkerbell and Eeyore, for returning

Pope, for not being able to distinguish between Love Deuce and Dingo’s rear ends (He also, very cautiously avoided letting on as to which he preferred);

Butt Plug, and his Harem of Roll Back, Dingo and Love Deuce, for almost going to Benidorm to run a half marathon (almost as it is this weekend)

And finally, Adam the Lager Drinker, a virg*n, for doing two laps of the pub car park by way of a run.

As according to Pickled F*rt run write ups are now subject to editing and censorship I have decided that 2 versions of the evening are now required to confuse both the censor and anyone else with nothing better to do with their time than read WLH3 run write ups. There is “THE GRUMPY OLD MAN”version and the” normal” version, I will leave it to the reader to decide which one is which.

The pack descended on Hampstead for an unseasonal night run, most of which was off road on the heath, but being the bunch of intelligent forward planners we are, most of us had remembered to bring a torch and had full confidence in the trail laying abilities of the co hares, our esteemed GM, Dingo and Eric.

For some blo8dy stupid reason our idi8t Hare Raiser decided that Hampstead in the pitch dark would be a wonderful venue and failed to make it doubly clear on the website to bring an extremely powerful torch and then to compound it all, allow the run to be set by some femininazi suffragette bayarch, Dingo and the most infamously inept hare in WLH3 history, Eric. Talk about a recipe for disaster!

The weather had behaved itself and the night was reasonably mild for the time of the year and the pack set out across the heath on a variety of terrain, woodland, open heath, paved paths, muddy tracks taking in all the heath in its autumnal glory. The checks were well marked and not too difficult and all in all was an excellent example of a run for our 2 virg8ns, Amy and Clare and also vindicated the decision of long time LH3 harriette, Car Say No to check out the other hash in London (City of course being a checkless black top sprinting club rather than a hash). After a reasonable length, but not too long a trail, the markings finally led the pack up Parliament Hill with its excellent views of London for a welcome drink stop consisting of port, red wine and some homemade chocolate rocky road made by our very own (call me Nigella), Dingo. Predictably enough the grateful pack made short work of the refreshments on offer and then ambled back on the welcome downward slope to the pub.

Cursing ourselves for not wearing at least 3 layers we stupidly braved exposure and then potential broken limbs on the quagmire that is Hampstead Heath in winter (that’s why we go there in spring and summer, f*wits!). As we slipped and stumbled in the dark trying to find what few markings there were, I thought there’s no chance our 2 virg8ns Amy and Clare and LH3 visitor, Car Say No will come back again, even a City 2 check, 8 miler will be a welcome relief after this latest hashing master class in disaster. After what seemed half a lifetime and somehow having avoided serious injury (no thanks to the idi8t hares) the entirely predictable drink stop venue was the top of Parliament Hill with the same old boring vista of London. You would have hoped that the refreshments on offer would have compensated for the view, but not a bit of it, Eric had already guzzled half the port and to add insult to injury, it was not even a decent vintage, add to that a box wine better suited to embalming corpses and some kind of chocolate flavoured concrete that did for 3 of my fillings and you get the picture. The only redeeming feature was a short downhill on inn that didn’t even need much marking from the hares it was so predictable.

After a nice downhill amble the pack repaired to the pub to replenish lost body fluids with a decent selection of beers and even wine for the harriettes. It was a pleasant surprise to find that the pub had laid on a welcoming buffet of rice, ratatouille and chicken in a nice creamy sauce (Dingo had plainly done some good PR with the landlord). Seeing how the pack hoovered up the fare on offer, seconds were swiftly provided and it was a well fed pack that was called outside to the circle by our RA for the evening Wacker.   

Finally we got back to the pub only to discover it was another yuppified gastro pub charging £4 a pint and god knows what for the plonk they called wine. Having somehow felt guilty about bankrupting the hash, they laid on a buffet for the hash, a bit of boiled rice that hadn’t even been cooked in organic saffron scented chicken stock, some Frog veggie dish and a bit of battery farm chicken in some bland cook in sauce. The portions were so meagre they had to bring out more before we suffered from malnutrition. To cap it all we were dragged out into the freezing cold for the privilege of listening to Wacker spouting bullsh*t in the circle.

The following were justly convicted of their crimes and in the non sexist spirit of WLH3, girly down downs of Pimms were offered as well as the more traditional beer. 

Dingo and Eric as hares, Simon/Casual for hashing once a year when there is food on offer, Rambo for mud wrestling, Butt Plug for thinking he could do a half marathon with no training, Clare and Amy virg8ns, Spare Rib deputising for LH3 visitor Car Say No (who had driven off), Your scribe for being illiterate enough to have to spend£285 on a creative writing course to create these semi literate masterpieces for the WLH3 archives, Next Week for playing with gadgets and a couple of others that I could neither remember or decipher from Wackers scrawled notes.

What the hell is the circle coming to when we give out girly drinks like Pimms, is that why the subs went up to £2 a run, for f*ks sake! Let these feminists drink beer, it’s good enough for blokes to swallow so why not them? One of these days there will be an RA who can a) give down downs that are actually worth recording and b) be legible enough to record. As you thick b*stards can surmise it was the usual predictable trash along with some ridiculous notion that the scribe be enrolled on a creative writing course, well stuff that, you ain’t educated like wot I is.  

On On

Mad Cow

No No

Grumpy Bovine