Braemar Hill

Hare - Cheesy
Write-up - Rooted

The pack - CUTR, Gary Glitter, LIT, Octo, Finlay, BMT, Hanna Montana, James, Jonathan, Tight Lips, Screwtop, Brother Anus, Hopeless, Poon Tang, AFWD, Macau, Countess of Anal Cristo, Rooted, Wai Chee

LIT FB photos

A was a rather classy park within Braemar Hill Mansions, a park that we often run past on the other side of the fence admiring the twinkling fairy lights, babbling fountains and expanse of grass. However, send some hashers up Braemar Hill and they automatically go to the usual park no matter how well advertised A is nor how well marked from the bus stop. Finally just after 7pm, the hare decided enough hashers had assembled to unveil the secret scroll of the LSW Hash. It was full of hieroglyphics that the hare carefully interpreted for our benefit and an ancient map that we were warned had no connection to the route we were about to run, except to show that there were three splits.

The first challenge was to follow the hare's explicit instructions to find the out trail. After weeding out those who could not follow basic instructions to A, it should have been a much more alert pack doing the run. Should have. Cheesy: "Go out of the gates, over the road and up the hill to pick up trail." Pack: "Which road did he mean?"; "Do we have to go up?"; "I can't find trail!". Thankfully the hare has ended his minimalist marking experiment and decided to use a whole box of chalk on trail and so, eventually, we sorted ourselves out and it was Gary Glitter who led the pack up to the first Check on Wai Tsui Crescent. This was marked as a W/R split. I headed off right along the Crescent with a young hasher bounding away, glad to be able to run at his own speed rather than with his Dad. Some steps down tempted me, but the young foal had run on ahead and I thought some more jaded eyes might be needed to actually check for trail rather than using wishful thinking to find the correct route. Naturally we came to a 'T' and the true R1 trail was down those steps!

Down Wan Tin Path and left on Cloud View Road. I caught up with LIT just in time to be a witness to her close shave with death by taxi driver (luckily both somehow managed to avoid each other at the last moment) and then just about caught Wai Chee Kok as she found the Check Back on Yee King Road and had to double back on ourselves to the steps up by Evelyn Towers, correctly called by LIT (just as well that taxi driver missed her earlier). I passed Brother An*s muttering darkly about his (in) subordinate Jonathan who had already dragged him up a vast number of steps to reach A and was not impressed by having more to do on the run. It was then up into the shiggy, minding for wild boar. LIT was in the lead at this point and decided the chance of snakes was too high so asked for a willing victim to go ahead. Luckily, Po was just behind her, and with a bit of prodding, gallantly went ahead to battle the snakes (unlike PCT last week). Taking the quicker route to find the W/R re-join, I only found the Check Back, cue some abruptly stifled swearing when I realised there was a young and impressionable mind just behind me. Back tracks were necessary to the shiggy route less travelled (again correctly called by LIT - some of Hopeless' trail knowledge is beginning to rub off on her). The trail was slippery and slidy, but well-marked. Unless you were Hannah Montana who decided to try and find an even more shiggy option ignoring at one point the trail marked to the left.

Finally we reached the re-join and could stretch our legs a bit down Sir Cecil's Ride. Po sprinted off despite having been complaining for the last hour about how much his muscles hurt after track the day before. Naturally, the pleasant running did not continue and trail took a sharp left turn up the riverbed to reach the rundown buildings of Mount Butler HF Radio Receiving Station at the top. Then we reached the second W/R split. It is the start of race season and I have a couple of important races coming up, so don't really want to injure myself. Knowing how slippery the proposed trail was - being downhill shiggy, I thought doing W2 and staying on the Wilson trail would be safer. I should at this point have just created my own trail from Wilson and Sir Cecil's Ride and got back in one piece. But I followed trail along the catchwater that is all broken up concrete, sudden holes and slippery rocks. Not minding the trail well enough, I miss-placed a step and lost my balance leaving the skin of my left knee on the concrete catchwater and blood pouring down my leg. I hobbled on as best I could, shortcutting the end of the trail to take the quicker way down Po Luen Path and back to A.

As for what happened on true trail, well. R2 was not an awful mess, though most hashers reported not being able to stay upright. R3 was where the real fun and games started, particularly if you were Jonathan, pointing your torch back up at LIT and Screwtop the latter of whom was having all sorts of problems and ended up skinning her arms and stomach on the concrete. Others were finding themselves jumping into unexpectedly deep water and Blow My T!ts was justifiably proud of herself for scrambling around several obstacles on her own. On getting back to A, the hare assured the pack that he had taken his daughters (aged 6, 4 and 4) along R3 and they had had no difficulties, so the pack should have been fine. Considering Cheesy thinks nothing of running down to paddle across the harbour to get to work, the hard core nature of his daughters should come as no surprise. The hashers however are more of a mixture, from extremophiles to absolute wusses. We did all make it back, mostly in one piece, skin and blood on trail the testimony to the toughness of the run! Thanks Cheesy!

Down Downs by Hopeless - racing against time for the 11pm MTR curfew

The hare CFF - great trail 3 splits, slippery R2, wading on R3

CFF - "Hash Scroll" to explain trail markings

Brother Anus - DFL by a long way - "not been running for 2 weeks"

Hash Crash - Rooted on W2!

Hannah Montana - Sayonara until next visit

Wai Chee Kok - 150 runs!

Hopeless & Gary Glitter - did the CB after first re-join and left it unmarked so the Rambos could enjoy it.

(Usual) latecomers - Wai Chee & Poon Tang, CUTR and Gin n Vomit

Jonathan - the new haircut didn't make him any faster on the Moontrekker 50

Screwtop - got stuck on R3 drop and scraped arms going down.....

Gill to Wai Chee getting Po to help her on R3 walls

LIT DDs:

Screwtop for the arsey way down R3 Wall

Jonathan for helping by full beam of torch on LIT face & only holding the branch back

CFF for picking both areas LIT about to set runs with Hopeless

Song sung by hares and all those with "The Song" T-shirts.

6.68km 69mins