R*n 712: Windermere

We've lost Highway on innumerable hashes over the years, so there was a lingering suspicion that he has used his final appearance as a hare had been used for the settling of scores by sabotaging his own trail.

The amber weather forecast warnings foretold of monstrously inclement weather, a veritable monsoon sweeping through Cumbria carrying vestiges of flour as a plausible excuse for the trail marking or the lack thereof.

Mercifully the rain was not too bad during our actual run. Nevertheless we were wet from rain and perspiration, with waterlogged feet, but without that unpleasant seepage of rainwater into nether regions that prolonged downpours can bring.

Our assembly point was at the Brookside Inn Windermere, and we were pleased to have a goodly turnout of visiting hashers, breaking their journey en-route to Edinburgh EuroHash from origins in Dublin, UK and the Middle East.

The first check took about ten minutes to suss, and the second one longer. Hashers trolled the streets of Windermere terrorising its population until a child's thimbleful of flour in a shop-front hinted at a direction of travel and gathered us for a further bout of hunt the flour, next found on the opposite end of Windermere town centre. At this rate of progress, we would be benighted a third of the way round the trail.

Fortunately progress accelerated and the pack arrowed athletically (hmmm!) up a wooded path / rivulet to Orrest Head. As would become later established pattern, the false trails married up with later bits of trail, resulting in 'on-on' calls coming from FRBs on false and correct trail simultaneously.

We halted at the Orrest Head Viewpoint and the hash flashers got to work to record our activities for posterity. We descended wet slippery tracks, crossed the main Kendal to Windermere road, then some fields and a housing estate leading to our beer stop, losing a few hashers en-route. 

After the Beer Stop, we split, with Rambos heading steeply up-hill to a second viewpoint. Descending we met with the Wimps and naturally assumed they were heading the right way. No: dawning realisation that we were heading towards Crooklands rather than Windermere brought us to our senses and we retraced the Wimps route until checks were reached. As far as I can tell, 4 checks including an unknown square check symbol and all arranged in a way that left the right route ambiguous and with mere hints of flour, this part of the route having been set yesterday. The pack sundered and the FRBs were back at the pub 40 minutes earlier than the tail-enders, apart from the FRBs who lost their way.

As we were in the pub parking spot, we had a brief circle to wish all the best to Highway and to leave him a poster with pictures of hashers to remind him of good times. The poster was expected to have a measure in centimetres, but in Brexit spirit, these had been translated to inches, which if memory serves correct made the poster 2.54 times bigger than expected. I guess Highway will wallpaper a room with it.