Bicester H3 #2645

I have been having the best time wandering around the countryside here in England, running with another hash club almost every day (have run 12 hash trails in the past 13 days). Today, I had the opportunity to run with the longest running ‘weekly’ hash in all of the UK, the Bicester H3. For a quick review, the first hash club in the UK was the Longmoor H3, founded by Richard ‘Mountain Rescue’ McAllister on 12 May 1969. The second club to form was the Commando Forces H3 founded by Ray Thornton on 1 Mar 1971. On the heels of the Commando Forces H3, another club was formed months later when Mike Read arrived from the Lagos H3 in Nigeria. Eager to extend his hashing lifestyle, Mike founded Westcombe Park H3 on 19 Dec 1971, and this hash is still active, making it the now longest running hash club in the UK.

Both the Longmoor H3 and the Commando Forces H3 were military based hash clubs, and due to force rotations, they folded with the departure of their founders. Ray Thornton subsequently was reassigned to Oxfordshire and wasted no time founding yet another hash club, the Bicester H3 on 1 Apr 1974. While the Westcombe Park H3 is the longest running hash in the UK, Bicester H3 is the longest running weekly hash, and has racked up the numbers to show for it, having completed over 2600 trails.

Now, back to the trail today, the pack could not have been any nicer and more welcoming to a ragamuffin visitor such as myself. Once the pack had gathered, we had a quick chalk talk and off we went. Now the Bicester H3 has one mark that is a first for my travels. A check is a bar, just one long line of flour. Everywhere else I have seen this mark it was a false, but a false here is an X which is found many places (it is also a check in many places, but here there are no circles to be seen. There were only four marks on trail . . . A standard blob of flour, an arrow, the bar which is a check, and an X for a false. That’s it!! I love the simplicity, and most of the trails I set have just a few basic marks too, so I would fit in just fine with this club. 😊

Trail was all out in the countryside, mostly crisscrossing farmer’s fields and a bit of old road, with the final km or so snaking its way through some single file dirt paths between buildings as we rambled into the finish. A most excellent trail. As the pack reassembled, everyone made their way to the bar to quench their thirst with their beverage of choice until circle started. Short and sweet the circle was, we all had a few laughs and then recessed to the bar for one last round and talked a bit of hash history.

Another great day on the hash . . . I really liked this pack, will have to come back for another visit.Read more