DEVON A2B WORDS FOR SATURDAY 5th
MAY 2012
POINT A: The Ness Car Park, Shaldon
POINT B: The Ness Car Park, Shaldon
HARES: Larksvomit, Paraprick & VW
Passat
BEERMEISTER: Zombie (who couldn’t run as she was
limping badly after twisting her ankle at Tuesday’s Ashburton Run)
ATTENDEES: 15+
comprising: Shatnav, Zombie, Man-Pig, Mike (what’s his hash name?), Comes
Tonight, Twice Nightly, That’s Crap, She’s Ready, Come Back, Hairy Mollusc,
E-J, Cousteau, Rise ‘n’ Shine, P-Nut, Menage-a-Trois (& at least one other but
I’m blessed if I can remember who!).
A COMEDY OF ERRORS
The wettest April on record had obviously put a downer on
attendees at May’s A2B which, historically, had been run in pretty good
weather. Circa 16 hashers gathered at the Ness car park for the run with a
particularly good turnout from Plympton Hash & VAG (Volkswagon Audi Group).
Many of which were camping at Cofton Farm near Cockwood & had arrived at
Point A by train (& without paying & thereby defrauding First Great
Western of wajid falous!). Good effort lads & lassies!
A sign of things to come commenced in the circle when the GM
forgot to nominate anyone to do the Words & so ended up having to do them
himself. There was one A2B virgin who, I think was Come Tonight from Haldon
Hash. Menage-a-Trois was nominated RA for the day & Larksvomit commenced by
offering a plethora of excuses as why there was no trail & why he had to
send Paraprick out to relay it earlier that morning. Original marks, if they
existed, would be in white chalk. Re-laid marks would be in flour or pink chalk.
Larks explained that he would be haring by car....now that’s a first for the
A2B. This left some wondering if the entire trail would be on-road. He then
stated that there was an immediate Long-Short split from the car park & babbled
something about £3. Now some of those gathered thought that everyone would need
£3 en-route. Others interpreted it as only the Shorts requiring £3. The Longs
were then pointed in the direction of Shaldon and some went running towards the
Ness pub whilst others ran back to their cars to get £3. The Shorts remained
motionless. Naturally this had the effect of splitting up the pack from the
outset.
The initial Long-Short split was pretty much defined by
gender. The Longs comprised an all male affair whilst I think the only male representatives
on the shorts was Ménage-a-Trois (watch him girls – he’s a real fanny magnet!)
& Mike.
That’s Crap lead the Longs up the Ness and past the
viewpoint. This was the last we saw of That’s Crap for another 21/2
hours! That’s Crap maintained that the trail ran north along the eastern edge
of the golf course & off he went. The slower Longs followed the trail only
upto the edge of the golf course and then looped back towards the entrance to the Ness car park. Here the tail
went cold. Did we join the Shorts who must have taken the passenger ferry
across to Shaldon’s Back Beach or did the trail lead elsewhere? That’s Crap was
nowhere to be seen. E-J, Hairy Mollusc & Shat-Nav (amazingly still on-trail
at this stage) were checking the periphery of the car park for the trail that
would eventually take them onto Shaldon Bridge, Cousteau wondered whether we
may be required to spend the afternoon doing a continuous loop round the Ness
& Man-Pig was convinced that the trail would have been laid through
Smuggler’s Tunnel & onto the beach.
It seemed that everyone was wrong...including the hare who had laid the trail
up the (private?!) steps to the right of the flats overlooking the car park.
Front runners were barred from pursuing the trail as laid by angry residents.
The FRB’s then had to skirt around the flats in the hope of picking up the
trail somewhere on the main Torquay – Teignmouth road. Man-Pig failed to find
any sign of a trail in the tunnel. On returning to the car park he failed to
find any sign of the hash either! He’d only been in the tunnel 60 seconds. He
then did his own thing & decided to follow the Shorts via the ferry.
Whilst the Longs were wasting a lot of time going in ever
decreasing circles around the Ness, the Shorts were enjoying a life on the
ocean wave. Their trail, confusingly, did not require £3. Rather it only
required £1.50 for the ferryman & his dog, Cereberus, to take them to the
other side. So they wondered, what was the other £1.50 for? P-Nut commented
that the change would come in handy as contraceptives form the ladies toilet on
the seafront were exactly £1.50 for a packet of one (unflavoured). On arrival
at Back Beach the harriets put their spare £1.50 to good use and did some
shopping & indulged in an ice cream, safe in the knowledge that crafty Larks
had cunningly engineered a good gap between the Longs & the Shorts. This
respite from the frenetic pace that typifies the A2B was put to good use. The
harriets settled down to a picnic on the beach whilst Ménage-a-Trois seized the
opportunity to stow away on a ship bound for the antipodes. There he started a
successful sheep farming business, got married, raised three children and still
returned to Teignmouth in good time to beat the Longs to the first regroup.
From Back Beach the trail was somewhat feint. Any marks that
had been lain in flour had blown away and white chalk marks were sometimes on
the top or sides of walls. However,
aided by Paraprick, the Shorts soon found themselves on the seafront running
northeast with a brisk, but nevertheless tanning, onshore breeze with jus a
hint of rain. Paraprick laid some new marks on the promenade and kept the
Shorts together as the trail ran for a
mile along the top of the sea wall that protects the railway line [Boring fact
of the day: the track between Dawlish & Teignmouth is the most expensive to
maintain across the whole of the UK’s rail network]. The trail went as far
along the sea wall as it was possible to go before the track entered the first
of three tunnels between Teignmouth & Dawlish. Here there was only one way to go....unless we were swimming
for part of the trail..... and sure enough the marks lead through the underpass
below the track. This took us to an impromptu regroup (but no beer) at the bottom
of Smugglers’ Lane. After a 15 minute wait, & no sign of the Longs, She’s
Ready lead the Shorts to a check at the top of Smuggler’s Lane.
Meanwhile Larks used his vantage point at the entrance to
the rail tunnel to look back at an uninterrupted ¾ mile view of the footpath
that sat on top of the sea wall......no sign of the Longs.....oops! Eventually
Man-Pig came into sight. “Am I last?” he queried. “No. You are a pillock”
replied Larks. “You’re way behind the Shorts & you’ve lost the Longs”. “Ah
well” said man-Pig, “That’s probably because I’m on the Medium trail”. “Double
pillock. There is no Medium trail”. Then we spied Cousteau sprinting along.
Quite a way behind him came EJ & Hairy Mollusc; all reaching us some 5 or 6
minutes after we first sighted them. We looked back expecting to see the others
but absolutely no sign of That’s Crap, Come Back or Shatnav. We waited another
5 minutes but still no-one in sight so Larks instructed us to attempt to catch
up with the Shorts who, by this time, were at least half-an-hour ahead of us.
Sensibly, the Shorts had not kicked out any of the checks.
This allowed the “found” Longs to “check it out” at each check. From the check at the junction of Smuggler’s
Lane & the Teignmouth-Dawlish main road the trail headed north, bypassing a
return to the South West Coast path. After a short while, another check took us
left into Holcombe towards the Castle Inn. The “found” Longs now comprised
Cousteau, Man-Pig, Hairy-Mollusc & EJ & we’d been running for 1 hr
& 10 minutes without a beerstop. Then The Castle Inn came into view.
“Beestop” we all thought, but no, just another check. We followed marks first right & then left
through a housing estate & past one house with 3 Series 2 Landrovers parked
outside (or was that 2 Series 3’s?). At this point Larks & VAG cruised past
but offered no guidance as to how long to the beerstop. The trail then went
down a short fenced alleyway exiting into fields and a public footpath at the
western edge of Holcombe. This was an area Man-Pig recognised from previous
Teign Valley runs from the Smugglers. After a couple of fields we came to a
crossroads. EJ checked ahead towards Holcombe Down, Cousteau & Man-Pig went
left towards Higher Holcombe Farm and Hairy-Mollusc checked right towards
Westbrook. Man-Pig & Cousteau checked left because they thought that Point
B might be in Newton Abbot and the remaining £1.50 required for the train
journey back to Teignmouth. EJ called “On-On” on seeing one dot. This was a
correct call as Larksvomit’s guidance in the Circle was “One & On”.
However, we all found ourselves back at the Crossroads at the same time as EJ
had subsequently found a cross just past the first mark. We rechecked and
eventually found ourselves on a nice winding track leading down to Westbrook
before joining a lane leading to Holcombe Farm. At the junction of the track
and lane there was a huge arrow in flour pointing us up the hill...this had
clearly just been laid and, just as clearly, laid from a car!
Cousteau led the way, up one side of Aller Hill and down the
other, past a check at the crest. We then ran through a ford and under a very
nice, ornate stone arch to arrive at the first beer stop. This was the first
time we’d seen the Shorts since the start of the run some 11/2
hours earlier! And the pack was still split with the ”lost” Longs still
unaccounted for. As the Shorts had been at the beerstop for sometime, we didn’t
pause for long before checking out the trail. Comes Tonight checked the very
inviting, & highly probable, public footpath that lay opposite the
beermeister’s car. Twice Nightly and P-Nut were doing checking of another sort,
having accosted a passer-by and checked out his Labrador puppy. Menage
eventually got us underway by finding the first mark at the bottom of Luscombe
Hill, and what a hill this was. Three quarters of a mile of steep, uphill
tarmac & no checks. The views were good though. To the left was the site of
Luscombe Castle, Luscombe Park & Luscombe Wood further up the hill. I
imagine that the stone arch was once the entrance to the castle. On the right
was Summercombe Wood which should contain a stately home judging by Oak Lodge
but none is shown on the map. Perhaps it was a back entrance to the stately pile
near the beerstop that was being rebuilt?
As usual, the very athletic Cousteau FRB’d almost to the
crest of Luscombe Hill only to be greeted by a fishhook with an ‘X’ below
it.....and a pink penis! The idea of running back to the last runner which
still comprised the “lost” Longs wasn’t entertaining. We’d been separated for
over 2 hours now &, as far as we knew, they were still crawling around the
pubs in Shaldon. Accordingly the 3 FRB’s, Cousteau, Man-Pig & EJ, elected
to remain at the fishhook until the main body of the pack caught up. Eventually
all the Shorts arrived but still no sign of the “lost” Longs. P-Nut was highly
unimpressed by the rather poorly drawn picture of a willy, in pink chalk, on
the tarmac. Cousteau had been first to the fishhook &, being a
straight-laced sort of chap, he hadn’t drawn it. Man-Pig was second to the
fishhook & P-Nut was clearly suspicious but Cousteau was adamant that it
was already there by the time he’d arrived. Man-Pig in the clear......for a
change. Larks then pulled up with a passenger – Come-Back. Larks had found him
struggling at the bottom of Luscombe Hill & given him a lift. The other two
“Lost ones”, Shat-Nav & That’s Crap, denied that they’d ever been off trail
& declined a lift. Larks said that he’d only just done the fishhook &
that he was most certainly not the graffiti artist. Then Rise’n’Shine noticed a piece of broken
chalk in the verge. Conclusion – a phantom penis drawer had come across the
piece of broken chalk in the past 15 minutes & effected his trade before
disappearing into the woods. Crikey! We were miles from anywhere. Who was going
to lie in wait for the opportunity to grab a piece of broken chalk?
Without waiting for the “Lost Two” to catch us up, the trail
took us off-road & into the Tower Plantation near Merry Pool. Here we got a
little lost before Comes Tonight and Twice Nightly got us back on trail leading
towards Little Haldon. This was the highest point on the trail and gave us some
superb views looking south across the Teign Estuary. However, one superb view
gave way to another as we heard the unmistakeable drone of a Spitfire above us.
Sure enough a Spitfire and a Hurricane arced, gracefully across the sky. They
had almost certainly come from the old airfield at Bolberry Down where there’s
a gathering of historic aircraft every May bank holiday. Our view stop was cut
short by the arrival of the rain. Fortunately, it didn’t last long. We next ran
though a disused quarry pit & emerged into a car park at the edge of
Teignmouth Golf Club. Hairly-Mollusc took the mantle of FRB, closely followed
by She’s ready, and took us to our second Long-Short split for a brief loop in
Humber Down wood before arriving at the second beerstop at the White Well
picnic area. This kies just below the Club House to the Golf club. Here, we
were treated to a number of firsts: first white chocolate on the hash, first
strawberries of the year, first sight of Shat-Nav & first sight of That’s Crap
since Point A! Whilst the harriets oooo’d & ahhhh’d regarding the wide
selection of choccies, Larksvomit came clean & admitted that Point B was,
in fact, Point A. Additionally, if we were to get the passenger ferry from
Teignmouth to Shaldon, we’d better get our skates on as the last ferry was at
4.15 due to tide conditions & it was now 3.30pm. Arguments ensued as the sign
outside the Ferry Boat Inn clearly stated that the last ferry was 4.30.
P-Nut wanted to get back quickly as she had a party to go to
in Shagford. Larks explained the route back & said that, if we didn’t want
to risk missing the ferry, we should follow the trail down to the main road at
a junction with a Chinese laundry & takeaway on the corner which was near
the rugby club. P-Nut set off followed by, for the first time today, the entire
pack! The route back to the Ness car park was almost entirely road but pretty
well marked. In fact, apart from the cock-up in the Ness car park, the trail
had been pretty well laid so well done to Larks & Paraprick – That’s Crap,
Shat-nav & Come-back should have gone to Specsavers before the run!
Once out of the woods, we were treated to an even better
view of Teignmouth, Shaldon & the Teign estuary. Quite spectacular really. The
sun had come out and was reflecting off the water. All very tranquil and, even
better, we now knew that it was downhill all the way back to the cars. We ran
down towards the ruins of the Bishop’s Palace before bearing left down Coombe
Lane. At the junction with Shepherds’ Lane the trail went straight on.
Ménage-a-Trois and most of the pack followed the trail. P-Nut’s local
knowledge enabled her to SCB and turn
right down Shepherds’ Lane, emerging onto the main road almost opposite Shaldon
Bridge. By this time everyone knew where they were. Marks were ignored. Heads
down. Everyone forged their own trail back to the Ness car park where Zombie
was already waiting with the bags.
In the Ness pub, the Plympton contingent ordered beers
whilst Rise’n’Shine, Twice Nightly and Comes Tonight looked very prim &
proper, enjoying a pot of tea. Mike was confused. First he wanted a tea &
then settled for a lager. Menage-a-Trois cobbled together some notes regarding
faux pas en trail whilst Shat-Nav prepared the down-downs in the beer garden.
Down-downs were awarded to the Hares & especially
Larksvomit for a series on Firsts:-
1st hare to lay an A2B by car.
1st hare to loose half the pack from the very
outset.
1st hare to exceed one hour to the first beer
stop etc etc.
Man-Pig got a down-down as he was overheard muttering
something about “That’s Crap taking up the rear” during the first beerstop.
Clearly a flashback to his public school education.
Come-Back for getting a lift.
That’s Crap for getting lost.
P-Nut would have got a down-down for her prudishness reading
the pink willy but she’d already departed for Shagford. Zombie & Shat-Nav
were off to Cornwall for the rest of the weekend so they departed early
together with Menage & a couple of others. This left the Plympton crowd
checking smart phones for train times back to Starcross. With only ten left we
decided on a last beer nearer Teignmouth railway station and so drove the happy
campers to the Blue Anchor. We’d just finished our first beer when Doris
arrived (sans Rambo who was spending the bank holiday weekend running three
marathons). We were also treated to the
company of a pretty drunk, but harmless, convict who was enjoying day release
from a local penitentiary. Another beer and then Larks volunteered to take the
campers back to Cofton Farm rather than faff around with trains....even if they
were free! Doris made the most of a weekend without Rambo and joined the
campers for a few drinks at the Ship Inn at Cockwood before catching the last
bus back to Teignmouth. Well done Doris. True hashing spirit.
That concluded an eventful day. What had initially started
as an unmitigated disaster actually matured into a good day out, despite the
unsettled weather. The trail turned out to be pretty good after the initial
teething troubles in the Ness car park; a mixture of sea, road, shaggy, track
& footpath with some great views thrown in. Well done Larks &
Paraprick.
Next month is the AGPU. Point A is still to be confirmed but
will be in the Brixham/Paignton area. I think the hares are Shat-Nav &
Zombie.
On-On,
Man-Pig