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ATHENS HASH HOUSE ROCK CLIMBING HARRIERS

MONDAY 28TH JULY

There were certain clues that all was not well on the mountainside of Pendeli as the newly formed Athens HHH Rockers collected together for another round of strenuous, dangerous, anarchic rock climbing.

We should have guessed early on we had been transported to a parallel universe but then hashers in any universe are not renowned for the mental powers or natural instincts other than in the beer finding and downing departments.

We had a hare, Ram Pants who seemed to have swallowed the best part of some Shakespeare sonnets, and kept informing us that the hash this week was entitled 'Run in the Forgotten Realms' or some such twaddle. She also informed us that YES this was her leaving hash .except she wasn't leaving .does this begin to remind you of that bit in Alice in Wonderland when you realise that Lewis Carroll perhaps had been smoking some illegal substances to bring him nearer to his god.

OH and I was appointed Hash Scribe as I was caught asleep on my feet and not talking me not talking eh??!

Cox and Balls then appeared with a humugous backpack on board and waved his hand in the general direction of the mountain top and said .'its that way chaps' .not an ON ON to be heard. We politely asked if we were on blue, to which we had no reply and no info on what was in the backpack either However we hoped to find the contents of Cock's backpack to be useful later, and were very peeved to find he had only packed a rope and parachute for his own use.

So off the intrepid runners ran and for the first 17 checks all went well as COCK UP, as he surely now must be renamed, pointed the direction from the check so none of us needed to bother checking ..so a check that is not a check .followed by a trail that was not a trail began. As it continued snaking on and over and up and down Mountain Goat pointed out that we were running some of the usual Hashes on Penteli, except it seemed we were doing about 10 of them all at once and did we see blue .after the 1st 10 minutes we did not not a drop .probably COCK UP had used it all up and the 20 checks within 10 yards of each other.

Never mind we said, we must surely turn for home as the sun sank behind the mountain, and sure enough we did turn in the right direction and ran courageously on .as there was no f ..g way we going back.

Until we 'hit the wall' , a regular experience for the modern day marathon runner you know despair, wobbly legs, total lack of coordination and breath .oh and the only way out a 100 foot climb on a vertical quarry wall you must remember that bit on the televised London Marathon when all those charity runners groan and wish they weren't running pushing a pram with a monkey in it!

This is when the penny finally dropped and we realised that all the little clues added up, a literary hare, no blue, no Fs but a plethora of checks and the ON IN up a sheer rock face .we had stepped into the other universe and nothing would ever be the same again

So there we were at the bottom wondering how to get to the top ..when who should appear to advise us on how hard and dangerous it was going to be ..somethings don't change no matter where u are there was The Bookmaker front running again!

Any way some of us made it back .maybe some of them are still out there as we did not wait around for the circle as darkness descended.

The moral of the story being Athens HHH need to set up advisory notes for hares in ANY dimension, that explain the TRADITIONS of trail setting ..which include basics like NO ROCK CLIMBS .and some blue along the way would be very helpful too.

OH there was some boring church with a spring too for the people who like that sort of thing.

ON ON

Flowery T~~T

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