Slowly come, slowly go

It takes something to irritate Walkie Talkie due to lateness, but at PH3 we have just the man!  Step forward (in your own time, obviously), Mrs Slocombe, co-hare for hash 428 who followed up making WT wait to set it the day before by keeping us standing and stretching in the thin sunshine beside the beach at Vila Cha for some twenty minutes, until we decided just to go anyway.  At which point he appeared.

The start did give leeway, however, as a quick loop over the sand brought us almost back to the start for a pit stop after about five minutes - beers at a cafe just seconds after Titchy Percy, running past another place had commented, "Oh, look in there - beers at this time of day, tut."  So, noone was irritated by Mrs S any more, although by the time he had managed to tie his dog to a suitable object, give it a (surely unnecessary) drink and find a fino for himself, we were ready to set off again and he was ready to be late again.

Then we were off once again and into the wilds and not-so-wilds of the area, well-known to many of us, of course, but set so as to give variation of recent hashes in the area.  In fact, it was so well set that we split into three groups, effectively, for a while, Walkie Talkie having got lost somewhere at the back with a couple of others and Mrs S having waved on the front runners before realising that the dog had jumped over a wall from which it couldn't get back.  How it could be well-enough set to allow us at one end to run without hares through fields and woods for about half an hour, but one of the hares to get lost one of only about three roads in a village is one of those delightful hash mysteries, like how Whippit can always find the wrong direction and how it takes Horny and Spanker so long to down a beer.

The terrain was varied, with country lanes, woodland and sodden fields, the latter wet with slurry as much as water, to everyone's delight.  It was dry, a relative rarity of late, even though the ailing sun gave up the ghost in the latter stages and near perfect for running, although had you witnessed Mrs Slocombe's amble finish you might have thought otherwise.  The end offered a nice, extended run home which stretched the field considerably but at least we did not have to wait too long for a limping Snorter with the keys to our hearts, I mean the beer.  Great food and crap service at the bash, which seems to be that restaurant's signature, then off we trotted, another one ticked off.

Spanker and I will miss the next one, due to hockey commitments, so it's on on until April.