Driving around Morecambe Bay to Witherslack, the more distant view was being eaten up by tendrils of sleet descending from dark clouds to the already wet earth. we passed the outer curtain of a squall and suddenly the wipers were doing overtime to clear the water ice mixture dumped noisily on the windscreen driven by a hurricane.

Storm Bella, amber warnings, pah, we're hashers. When the tough get going... FB, LP, TD, LP junior and Lurch trot off decisively. Or not. 10 minutes later, we were still wandering up and down, taking forensic samples of faint traces of white granules and testing for the presence of flour.

We guessed a route based on TD's family connections to Witherslack whilst ducking his head near houses in case relatives spotted him and invited him in to spread coronavirus.

On leaving Witherslack, the route became well marked and after a while we reached a decidedly watery depression to cross. LP got excited: he could test SealSkinz socks so was wading happily in the cold water. Others of us were less enthused. We social distanced another LVH3 pod, attempting unsuccessfully to circumvent the wet, and who reported that Witherslack has a mighty ruler, whose express permission was required for us to use the P_U_B_L_I_C footpath near his palace, and vented his righteous rage by kicking out our trail markings. It is the season of good will, so I hope he felt better after this act of vandalism.

By way of divergence, my spy network tells me that Witherslack has a cleric who hates Christmas, so the locals put up a Christmas tree. When the cleric complained, the locals erected a tasteful inflatable Santa. When the cleric compained, the locals erected a tasteful inflatable snowman. Etc. Who would realise such an unassuming, albeit pleasant looking village could have plot lines worthy of Midsummer Murders.

Eventually we went up such a big hill, that my pulse was doing over-time, and we ended up on some more familiar paths. We briefly met the hares on a country road and then the rambo route took us to a man made carved limestone pavement tilted at an angle. Avoiding the lethally slippery slimestone, the hares probably briefly contemplated leading us to a painful death and then relented on the death bit, by leading us via tangled briars and low whiplash inducing branches. Better for those who are vertically challenged than for us 6 footers.

The return was remarkably incident free despite the hares concerns of more trail tampering around someone's garden. Allegedly the route was one of our longer ones.

Anyway, a good time was had by all, so thanks Hares and fellow hashers. Now where's my grafiti kit so I can do a good job of marking the trail next time I'm haring...