Run # 46 – The Where in Wushan Square Run – Hare Yeti – Turnout 17 Questions raised by some of the more pedantic hashers, usually, no, always female, related to the actual start of the run in Wushan Square. The old formula often works, just stand around uselessly in some central location and the hashing world will finally come to you. It didn’t happen to scribe who had to locate the trail at the back of the square and follow it backwards to the start which was, surprisingly found at the entrance arch, yes!! As 5.00 pm crept by, the late comers crept in, including Jackie on her bike and Doggie Style on his new Giant. There’s some kind of thing going on here whereby the Giant owners make demands upon the security of the parking location of the bike that takes most of the gloss off the pleasure of cycling. Scribes advice is this; given that if your Giant is stolen, then you’ll be able to buy it back the following week at the market for half what you paid for it. So, this is a form of Chinese National cycle insurance, no premium and a 50% excess. Looks like a good deal, so relax. Anyway Doggie made it back from the Shanghai 1000^th run and still was able to cycle to the start of the HZ run, cycle back, and then set himself to do 20km on Tueday night; what’s he on? After Acronymph, Skidmarks, Hary, Hayley, David, Sevenup, Cartoon Porn, Titman, Jackie, Men Ching, Pushup and a couple of new French runners arrived, an on on was called and the path wend it’s way up, of course, around the stone paths till Cartoon Porn found the trail down some stone steps, from where he set up a continuous barrage of on ons. The pack did a voluntary regroup at the top of the steps for the back markers to catch up much to Cartoon Porns dismay, and then descended to a now delighted Cartoon Porn who in fact was standing on a check back (CB). So Yeti worked this one out very well indeed. Then it was on on around limestone features, up down, left and right and on on again to another regroup in the Maoist era lookout featuring imaginative use of concrete that could only have been designed and built by army engineers just back from the front. New runner Men Ching with Acronymph were last to the top, whereupon the pack went straight back down and followed a trail through some less picturesque parts of the park area, some construction workers accommodation (always makes you feel better about your own digs), some excavations, some poor old buggers vegetable garden with the gate flattened and finally down into a village area. Along the way a couple of Cartoon Porns friends caught up with the pack, which is a testament to the well set trail, and also to some additional marks put down by Doggie for latecomers. A CB in the village area saw the trail wend back up the hill whereupon it got back to Wushan square via Hefang Street. Trying to follow a trail along the busiest street in Hangzhou on a beautiful Sunday afternoon was a bit tricky, so the trail was abandoned and the pack went straight back to the start.  The French contingent and Hentai’s friends shot off immediately to avoid a down down, but Men Ching and David (Aussie) were not pre-appraised of the new-shoe rule and so very reluctantly took their down downs, the former choosing to decant her shoe into her cup; what was the benefit of that again? There was a smokers down down, and a last in down down, several wrong name infractions, and a naming, Aaron being christened Titman. Yeti’s run failed to receive a single vote in favour when a ballot was called as to the quality of the run, but this reluctance to vote may have been more to do with the danger of the circle being mis-identified as an unauthorised political gathering, because the run was good, just about right for a mixed and relaxed crowd. The restaurant in Hefang Street is always a good deal with good atmosphere, so it was a contented crowd who went their various ways after.

I walk to work each morning and on my way to work I look up at Laohe Shan and think, ‘I wish I was up there’. I did the same thing this morning but this time the thought ‘I wish I was up there’ was immediately followed by ‘gosh, up there doesn’t look as tall as it used too’.

It was a tall weekend, 7 hashers setting off on Saturday to attempt to hit all 14 of Hangzhou’s 1000ft hills in one day. We only hit 10 but it was as good a day’s walking as you’re going to get in constant, teeming rain. Despite the packs knowledge of the hills of Hangzhou it was sadly navigational errors that did for us.

Sunday we were off on Hentai’s Magical Mystery Tour, disappointingly 6 of the 7 from Saturday FAILED to show up on Sunday and DOWN DOWNs await them. So it was that a depleted pack (A, H, Pushup, PhoneBox, 7Up) made the long arduous journey out to Hentai’s secret location.

The secret location turns out to be a small village (some how villages in Zhejiang never quite manage to achieve quaint do they?) in the Daqing valley, a new location for all of us.

A well used tourist trail ran west out of the village and in to the bamboo forest, we were on chalk and away. But not for long. A few hundred metres in and we’re off chalk. Back to good chalk, no, we’ve not missed a touring. Spend ages looking round, exploring every possible turning off the trail before deciding the work-shy-fop of a hare hasn’t set a trail at all. Unanimously the pack decides that the best course of action is to follow the stone stairs all the way to summit which we did. The route up and the summit affording amazing views of the valley, mountains and the river, batteries being rapidly drained on cameras as the sun gets lower in the sky.

Nagging sensation in the back of mind that I’m missing something important here.

The trail emerged at a small, very communist looking concrete pavilion on a ridge that runs north-south (south-north if you’re Chinese). The pack quickly decide to head north up to what looks like the summit proper in search of views of the hills to the North and West.

From the summit I get my first true appreciation of how much more there is to the hills around Hangzhou, that we’ve just dipped our toe in with the stuff we’ve done that immediately borders the city.

That’s what it is, the sun’s going down! We’ve got about 20 minutes of day light left we’re at the top of a hill, off chalk and we need to get down quickly.

Push-up’s improbable-but-somehow-just-about-passable-trail detector goes off and we clamber over some rocks into the gloom of tree cover at twilight. It’s steep, very steep and as we make our way down I increasingly can’t work out the detail of what I’m stepping into. This is boar trap country and I now can’t look at what I’m stepping on even if I want to. The hills ring out to On On as the small pack attempt to track each other’s progress down the ridge. Somehow we manage to emerge at the bottom and back on to the tourist trail just as the light fails us completely. The timing couldn’t have been tighter. A short 1k run in takes us back to an awaiting hare.

The hare, in his defence claims to have set a trail that took a circuitous route up to the pavilion and then came down by the southern ridge. Down-downs were nonetheless awarded as we saw absolutely no evidence of this. 7Up appeared to be on a mission to get everyone wasted filling everyone’s glass except her own as full as possible.

The pack were rewarded with a dinner including wild boar (shot, not trapped, we wouldn’t to encourage that now would we) and we finally adjourned to Maya for 1 or 3.

On On
DoggieStyle.