R*n 471: Lowgill

Location location location!  Botton Mill was not as easy to find as the map implied (the map I set up on the website that is) and when we eventually found it there wasn’t enough space for all our vehicles in the gate approach kindly offered by the Botton Mill residents, so half of us parked up the road and crammed into two cars to park at the Mill.  More of this later.

A great turnout today, including visitors Shaggy (Mijas H3), Nicola (Guildford H3) and hash migrant Tidal Dave, who was hashing in the UK for the first time after returning from the French Riviera to Lancaster.

Beautiful location to start and, undaunted by the hares’ talk of 20 and 40 minute rambo splits, on on we went, led initially by No More Cum at the double in an attempt to avoid our getting mixed up with the in trail.  This is where the problems began.  The walkers I gather couldn’t keep up with the lead-out and on discovering the in-trail couldn’t be bothered to back-track so ended up following the trail in reverse (see separate reverse trail trash).

Anyway, we forward-trailers hashed down a lovely valley, then through wood and dale to a farm where we got directionally challenged.  Turns out there were two exits marked with flour from the farmyard and we chose the wrong one, then spent ten minutes not finding any further flour until Bubbles’ lateral thinking found trail again in the adjoining field (the one with the “little” bull as forewarned by the hare).  We all thought the knitting circle would have the same problem and we had no flour with us so Twit and Anti made a pathetic attempt at constructing an arrow with cow poo.  Of course, as we discovered later, this was pointless as the walkers were by then doing the reverse trail thing.  Anyway, several long woods and dales later with some trouble keeping on trail we arrived at the beer stop, passing the reverse walkers just setting off the way we had just come.  Confused yet?  Yes, so were we.  We also realised at that point that the reverse-trailers would surely get lost.

The lesser of the two rambo splits started from the beer stop and we rambos set off at a sprightly jaunt, unaware that Highway had taken the rambos option solo, several minutes behind.  Feels, Anti and I copped out of the second, longer rambos split, being already two hours into the trail and arrived at the on in in a timely fashion to join the forward-trail wimps and the hares.  No sign of the reverse-trail walkers or of Highway.  The other rambos arrived twenty minutes later and still no sign of the residue, so NMC went off in his car to look for them.

Now the issue of the remote-parking raised its head, as some car keys were still with the reverse-trailers and a few of us had deadlines to meet and it was getting late, so a complicated plot was devised to share lifts home without even waiting for the strays or the circle.  So for that reason I can’t comment on the eventual return of the losties, the difficulty of driving to the on inn with the road being closed or the eventual feeding of the few.

Despite the double-ended debacle, the horrendously long trail (8.5 miles rambos) the distributed finish and the very late lunch for the hangers-on, the hash was glorious and even the threat of rain didn’t materialise.  Thanks to No More Cum and his helpers for the hard trail marking and arrangements.