Run #2027 12th July 2026
Run – 2027 – 12th July 2026
Hares: STTI and Rick O’Shea
Location: Calahonda
Anniversaries: None that were there.
Hashers: About 20
Visitors and virgins: Yes but I don’t have names.
Run score: 9.3 or 9.4
What a great hash! Great trail, great on after, great drink stop if you are in to that type of thing and a runners’ run. Pity about the local dog toilet that was used for the circle. But at least it was in the shade.
What is it with Kaka Maps? He seems to get off on volunteering me as scribe. As an aspiring English teacher I can only assume he likes to read great writing but doesn’t have the attention span to tackle a Dickens novel.
And then we were off. At the first check I headed right. I was about to turn back when I spied a white blob quite a way from the check. Looking back I could just about see almost the entire pack just standing at the check. Nobody following up. Call me old fashioned but I thought the way to solve a check is for someone to follow up so if trail is found, said information can be relayed back to the check. As luck would have it after a few marks there was a check back so eventually the pack could see me running back. True trail went down onto a dry river bed.
After dickering along various trails we came out onto some streets where we encountered a really weird mark that looked like an F with a couple of bits added. It also looked a bit like the Japanese kanji for stop. Was this some cunning new mark the hares had encountered on their travels? Turns out it meant the trail is either first right, second right or straight. Why not just put a bloody check? Some hashers went first right and didn’t call anything, even though, I later found out, there were very clear marks about ten meters along. I tried second right and found a mark but that road came to a dead end. Then someone (was it Garden Stools?) called out that those who had gone first right were all coming back. OK. I’ll keep going straight and I came across a mark, after which absolutely nothing. As the entire pack had disappeared I decided to try first right and there was the trail.
The hares had explained that there would be a short and long trail and soon I came across a split - S and L. I assumed, correctly, that S meant short and incorrectly that L meant long. In fact L was obviously the old Roman numeral for 50. I worked this out because the L trail was about 50 meters longer than the S trail.
The hares had informed us that there were check backs and that they were obvious. I’m a great believer in check backs as they are guaranteed to rein in the FRBs. Having spent half an hour at the previous weirdo check I had gone from FRB to DFL (apart from Colonic who managed to get lost and did his own thing to the drink stop) and was surprised to arrive at a check back. The entire pack had been through and it hadn’t occurred to a single one of them to mark it. The hares said it was obvious so I took the first path it could have been. Went left. Nothing. Went right. Nothing. So I guess it was only obvious if you set it. Not if you had to solve it. Once I did solve it, it was a short stretch to the drink stop.
The hares have approximately 120 years of hashing between them and have hashed in around 96 countries. We were therefore surprised to discover back at the circle that there was another short - long split that nobody had seen. “We put the split on the road where the cars park” explained Rick O’Shea. Apparently there was one space where a car wasn’t parked. Didn’t occur to our hares that a car might come along in the next couple of hours and park there. A bit of trail marking 101. When setting a split don’t just do one S L (or W R or W M). Also put an S or L next to the first few marks on each trail. Many (most?) hashers don’t follow trail. They follow other hashers. They see someone turning left up ahead so they do likewise and may miss the split.
From the drink stop the trail went down to the boardwalk, along there for quite a bit then back inland to the start where Colonic conducted the circle. As I didn’t have a notepad and it’s now Thursday I don’t remember most of the down downs. There were three Marions (with various spellings) and something to do with various singers, and me for being like Bobby Moore, although, to be fair, I wasn’t quite in his league.
And then it was off to the hares’ villa down the road for barbecue and other offerings. An excellent afternoon. Many thanks to the hares.
On On
Dogface
