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The hares had asked for people to come carrying or in more extreme cases (see below) dressed as flowers but you can’t always fit everything on a bike. I met Annie and Anti Social outside an establishment called Est Est Est a little further down the road and it looked like completely the wrong sort of place to be starting from a hash from, particularly on Valentine’s night. Investigations proved that the right pub was in fact a few hundred yards up the road saving embarrassment all round.
The hares appeared and a somewhat depleted pack eventually set off. The hares had helpfully cut off the first loop of the trail in the interests of brevity and we headed across the fields to the front of Bodington Hall. The trail took us down through Bodington and past the very room where in 1985 I lived as an undergraduate.. Not that anyone else was interested.
We headed up Long Causeway and then through some increasingly overgrown woodland until we eventually arrived at the scene of a trail from the previous summer just above the Meanwood Valley. A head count revealed that we’d lost almost half of the (already small) pack and also one of the hares and on the basis that we hoped they’d gone back to the pub we carried on.
It was fairly fast and furious after that as arrows had helpfully been provided although I must have missed out a loop near the end as I somehow overtook Rapunzel, Matilda and Anti Social who’d been some way ahead of me. The missing pack members had safely made it back to the pub and we were back in about an hour which is never a bad thing in February.
A few people disappeared before the après hash claiming other commitments but a splendid spread was laid on which was thoroughly enjoyed by all. The pub had helpfully reserved us a few tables which wasn’t completely necessary given the barn like proportions of the pub and the lack of very many other punters and Down Downs went as follows:
Words by Owl
