So there we were, Baldbrick, Upperskirt and myself, relaxing in our luxuriously appointed rooms in the Crown Hotel, Middlesmoor, confident in the knowledge that nothing on earth could possibly disturb our weekend of tranquillity and relaxation except.....a scummy bunch of hashers who, by some billion-to-one coincidence, had decided to squat with their tents in the field immediately next to the pub. What a rotten piece of luck!

Never mind, we thought, perhaps if we go r*nning with them they'll leave us alone for the rest of the weekend. Besides, that Cyberseptic chappie usually sets such excruciatingly long r*ns that, by the end of the evening, they'd all just want to sleep for the next 48 hours and we'd hear no more of them.

Unfortunately, though, the aforementioned hare had only taken enough flour with him to lay about a mile of trail; luckily, the white stuff just lasted long enough to get us to another pub (also called the Crown Hotel, at Lofthouse), otherwise we'd have been stranded in the middle of nowhere, completely lost. As we were all rather looking forward to at least a half-marathon, the idea of being marooned in a pub with nothing to do but drink beer, eat food, drink beer, sit in the evening sun and, possibly, drink beer, did not appeal in the slightest, but we forced ourselves.

Sadly, after this enforced sojourn at Crown #2 (otherwise known as The Crow, according to the sign on the wall), things really started to go pear-shaped. Due to the hares' inadequate map-reading skills, we were faced with a situation where Crown #1 was at a considerably higher altitude than Crown#2, leaving us with no option but to walk uphill to get back to our starting point. I don't know, the things we athletes endure for our art!

Back at Crown #1 (Middlesmoor), we had very little choice but to take up residence in the bar, which was a damned nuisance as we'd already been to one pub. There was a stag night or some similar function on, so it was rather busy. One slightly the worse for wear female started to show an interest in Baldbrick's horn (not a euphemism), so he instructed her in his well-practised technique of extracting farting noises from it, whereupon she proceeded to play a whole, note-perfect tune on it! The look on Baldbrick's face, as he realised that he was possibly out of a job, was priceless. Decisions, decisions: do we sack him, or raise the hash cash to £3 so we can pay for some lessons for him?

And so to bed, to dream of the full English breakfast which awaited us in the morning. Perhaps we could stick a sausage in the mouth of the resident pub dog, and ask him to take it out to the campers.....

On on to Saturday morning, and hopefully no ruddy hills....