Artifuct Ladybird Wally BlowJob Hashgate C5 Iceman Motox Ms. Whiplash Eth Spot Baldrick Keith Potty TinOpener Miranda Honeymonster LeVoisin LadyCock Horse Handful Foghorn NipponTuck 2Bob Puddleduck Greenfly Caboose Hamlet and Jake the dog Dribbler Scrumper Lorraine TheTremblers Dumper Septic Lonely and Beaver the dog Cheating Cap’n Haystax Florence Zebedee PonyExpress… and a goodly contingent of Bicester and Oxford

Unbelievably, some foul fiend had set out to sabotage Wally’s mastertrail by laying some fearfully misleading signs that led some of us on a merry chase or two to nowhere. Although GBH’s name was bandied about as a possible saboteur he was not about and the false falses had been laid as an ‘X’, leading me to suspect a Bicester member. Time will tell.

However, everyone found the pub despite the best mis-direction efforts of Trailmaster Supremo Zebedee, who had originally put the wrong pub name and grid reference down on the Run Sheet (could this be due to incorrect information from Wally? Surely not…). Luckily, huge floury arrows had been placed on the roads to point us in the right direction. At the car park entrance Ladybird waved the Hash traffic into side roads and he was delighted when a non-Hash car turned off in the direction indicated, the driver waving grateful thanks as he sped to oblivion. The cold morning was warmed by the chat and badinage among the Berkshire and Bicester Hash members, along with a smattering of Oxford. Ladybird found an abandoned lavatory pan in a skip which would prove to be a useful prop for the Down Downs later. Dogs yapped and barked excitedly. A Bicester member tried to poison us all by turning up in a van belching black smoke and highly offensive fumes. Ms. Whiplash forgot which Hash we were running with today. All was going very well. Then Wally spoke for the Hares at the Gather Round. I thought it was quite a witty speech, well delivered off the cuff. But then Hashers are not the best listeners and the thought of being harangued by Wally for any length of time seemed slightly less appealing than having your nasal hairs plucked out with pliers so some began drifting away, eager for the off. Wally cut it short (unlike the trail) and off we went.

An early bullseye check saw 2Bob and Puddleduck trotting off after Greenfly, who was just as lost as they were. Most of the Hash had gone the wrong way which meant Ms. Whiplash, Eth et al were at the front while all the oh-so-clever FRB’s had to catch up. The countryside was fairly open so some of us took great pleasure in watching Spot and Potty zipping off in a diverging direction from those of us on the right path. I followed one of the Bicester boys down a long, uneven track to the check where I then followed Zebedee and another Bicester boy five blobs along to a false. Hmm. And this is where it started. We trekked back, deliberating on which bit of Wally we would cut off first, to find the trail cutting off over a cornfield. Or rather it cut off in the middle of the cornfield. Just disappeared. We milled and quartered, all to no avail, so three of us set off diagonally back up the hill, crackling through the dead, dried corn cob stumps. On the top we spotted the rest of the Hash half a mile away so we slogged off towards them, eventually coming to the rising track on which we found a bar and two falses. Confusing or what? Luckily Ladybird was ahead, waving us on and we eventually all made it to the regroup on The Ridgeway. There was minor puddle splashing by Hamlet and major fulminations against the unknown saboteur(s). Things began to chill slightly in the wan December sun so the more misguided of us lit out on the Long trail. It all went very well until that second check – Handful had even offered her ample charms for me to warm my frozen hand (er, well, sort of. A chap can dream). Greenfly turned off left with BGB(?) and Lonely, Beaver, Hamlet, C5 and I carried straight on over the deeply rutted, water-filled track. Beaver was in his element. His element being water. The muddier the better. Lonely and I watched as he slid hippo-like into a large, dirty puddle. Apparently, he would be staying the night at a ladyfriend’s and this was his idea of splashing on the aftershave. It seemed that C5 might have had a similar evening tryst for, as we looked back, he too slid hippo-like etc. Now some people may call me cruel for laughing like a drain at the sight of our ex-RA, ex-GM and all-round good egg C5 spluttering and cursing as he heaved himself from the morass but I thought it was damn funny. What wasn’t funny was the false Hamlet hit another quarter-mile on. We could just see Greenfly looking as lost as we were so we yomped back only to find that the Hares had strayed very much from the rules and laid a back-check down on to the disused railway line using flour blobs we had already run over. The Bas****s! The long, hard run down this hawthorn and tussocked way was both bloody (the hawthorns) and interesting (a long disused station platform) and funny ("Mind the hole!" I shouted back to Lonely and C5, the latter disappearing leg first down it – he was having that sort of day). We eventually caught up with Scrumper and Lorraine and were cheered in as we got to the second bridge/regroup, lined with gently steaming Hashers. Spot took a classic picture for the album from below then joined us aloft to look for the trail. Sadly it turned out to be back up the muddy great hill so by the time Lonely and I reached the top our quads were so hot you could have fried eggs on ‘em. Even Beaver was looking a touch peaky and looking back Hashers were spread out down the trail in various states of staggering exhaustion. But this was not the end. Iceman and Spot joined C5 and myself for a long, slogging run all the way back to the village where we came in (where else) at the bottom of the hill leading up to the pub. Gawd blimey!

Full marks to Artifuct and Ladybird for helping Wally out by laying 90% of the trail – as he told us, he’d had a touch of thrush. It was long. It was hard. It was spectacular. It was warm. It was freezing. It had nearly everything. A good one to get under your belt. Thanks chaps.

RA Motox and the Bicester RA (sorry didn’t get the name) presented the following :-