Now, was it gremlins, another Hashing group, or Gatecrasher going mad?  Answers on a postcard please.  The evening started pleasantly.  A reasonable crowd and a dry evening.  We turned left out of the pub carpark and headed for the main road.  Epic went right, backed up slowly by Lemony.  “It’s a false.” He said after going a few hundred yards, and they both turned back.  This is when the confusion started.  All ways were a false.  Wimpey then decided that Epic needed classes and re-traced his steps.  But there definitely was a cross on the verge.  Were there any other paths through hedges that we had missed?  Eventually the hare came round the corner and pointed us on – through the false.  “I didn’t put a cross there, I’ve noticed some of the marks have been tampered with!” We believed his at this point. 

After following the main road for a short distance more we turned right onto a footpath that skirted Oakley Park.  At a junction hounds eagerly went in both directions – only to find crosses marking both trails again.  By this time Gatecrasher was getting a bit paranoid.  He pointed us north until we touched the A420 and then back south into the woods.  It was somewhere here that Mismatch and Wimpey had a mud kicking contest.  They say Dingaling started it but no-one else saw that.  Professional Peach slipped on the wet logs but sustained only bruises.  Virgin flour was found on these legs, including the very muddy false that most of us seemed to go on.  We then turned north again before meeting a track into Dry Sandford, then south to Cothill and hack along the footpath to the pub.  There were a few more flour-flavoured mishaps but we all made it.  Even the walkers who had been sent on an unmarked short cut.

There was only one yellow vest which was awarded to Mismatch for bribing the RA.

The green shorts went to A Cruel Joke because he had not been seen in them before.

On On

Hare:  Gatecrasher

Hounds:  Wimpey, Lemony Snicket, Epic Fail, Dancing Queen, Billy Whizz, Dingaling, Menstrual, Mismatch, CS, Rubber Sole, Henry V, A Cruel Joke, Hutch, Ringer, Wilson, Qwerty, Gnome Alone, Big Stiffy, Hotlips, Professional Peach and Eric

Date: 22 July 2014

Distance: Who knows it was all so confusing!