T’was a warm, balmy summers evening, when a large number of eager hashers met at the Canal Turn for an evening stride. Amongst our clan were numerous virgins and a few not-so-regular hashers, one of which was The Gobbler, who had changed his name to Spunky, according to his T-shirt! A complete No No to those in the know, so he's now known as The Spunk Gobbler!

As we ran along the canal and past some lovely old narrow boats, hashers spread along the tow path, kept in line by several checks. After running up over a bridge, Rambos’ and Wimps’ went their separate ways. Being a Rambo, along with Speed Bump, Dormouse, Only Six Inch and an excited Cocker Spaniel, we trotted around a small field with two open checks, struggling to find a way out until Dormouse spotted a scrap of flour and a well camouflaged arrow. Lurch, one of the hares met us as we joined the Wimps trail, then we came across Off His Trolley searching for the knitting circle, who’d failed to appear. We ran on over a newly mown field of silage, in neat rows, perfect little jumps! We had to screech to a halt and dive into a hedge before we were run over by a self-propelled Claas forage harvester (in case anyone was interested), two tractors with silage trailers and a pick-up truck!

Up the hill and so to the noisy beer stop – nicely thought out with a litter bin, bench and right next to the M6!

Fully refreshed, we cantered on back down the track, across a different field into another Rambo/Wimp split. Wimping out this time, I slowed down to a walk to catch up on gossip and admire the brightly coloured flowers in gardens along the way. There was slight confusion with the trail as a footpath to the right revealed flour, but then as we headed that way, Baldbrick noticed the path also had flour and that looked like the quickest way back. Sir Tom Tom getting into spirit of things, enthusiastically shouted ‘Come back!’ to a poor, unsuspecting gentleman out for his evening walk! Strangely enough, the poor chap didn’t join us!

Cyberspetic, one of the hares’ rounding up his flock, met us to make sure we were going in the right direction. Up over the canal bridge and back down the tow path lead us to the Onn Inn, where refreshments and down downs were waiting for a sweaty bunch of hashers:

• Cyberseptic and Lurch for being excellent hares
• 3x Virgins for their first ever hash run
• Highway for reaching his 200^th run was presented with his bright yellow 200 run polo shirt
• Sir Tom Tom for trying to recruit new members along the way!

On On
Atomic Caton