Old Harry’s Bar 2022 (Bulletins.Awaiting.Hardening)
Hares Bianca and Horn Blower.
It’s the last weekend for schools out, the Prophets muse whether the grockles may be down the Purbecks en mass or will they be inching home and staying on the main BCP beaches or in the forest. We can only hope.
Apart from cyclists and camper vans that can’t drive above 30mph we have a non-eventful drive in.
We’ve never run from Old Harry’s before, so everyone is a bit confused where the car park start is. It’s up the dirt track to the left of the bar/social hall, wedge under the trees.
According to HB, Bianca was a live hare, somewhere out there tempting us with dust to follow.
Today’s trail we have a choice of three, 6, 4.5 and 2.5miles. Good thing to, as I need to get some mileage training under my belt. Shouldn’t be too bad as we normally go off towards Agglestone rock.
Off we go with an easy downhill start towards the church. Bit light on FRBs today as they could be in Trinidad sunning themselves on the beach in-between hashes. Well, we will leave it to the youngster Dirty Mother and Cougar to check it out. Make the mistake of following DM down towards the beach when we should have gone off right following the track parallel to the road.
I know this track, when it gets to the hill climb, the path doesn’t follow the field boundary, its sort of, goes up hill through the middle of the field until you see a gate. And this is what it does. Steep hill led to the pack being strung out, so we had a regroup on top of Ballard Down where we found B! Did she run it in reverse? We’ll never know. The fit runners are off towards the obelisk, so we give case, bad move as we eventually find a fishhook. Regroup at the obelisk. Decision time, down a steep slope or off towards the golf course. We take the easier trail only to find a bar, so it’s back uphill to the steep downhill, steppy path.
At the bottom we have left, right, and straight on. DM and I find dust to the right and follow until we stop at the road. Nobody’s with us, nobody’s calling. No option, jog all the way back. Quiet as the grave at the junction we bust out onto the road. Noise straight ahead at the caravan park, is that them. DM points to the left, up the road towards Swanage. We see disappearing around the bend the back of C. No option but to try and slipstream DM towards Swanage. We pound the tarmac until we hang left just past a house. Do we hear voices, is that El Picador and Grocer a couple of fields over? Back in the fold of the group, despite the Hare saying “where you been”, we delight in another tough accent of Ballard down to a checkpoint showing the way for the Mini, which meant we had to follow it towards Old Harry rocks. This part of the event can best be described as “straight on” “straight on” with a left-hand bias. Spotted Dick, Wurzle, Bendover, Turned On, Chippendale et al find their second wind and stretch the pack. Even with a long regroup we seem to have lost the Hare. So, we plod back towards Studland. C has inspiration and finds dust on a narrow side path leading to Joe’s café and the beach. All this means is we have even more of a hill to jog up past the Bankes Arms and eventually back to the club house.
On such a beautiful day, everyone was sitting outside supping their ale, ignoring the lady selling muscle ointments until the down downs.
Lots of ups, lots of regroups, hashes being lost and nobody caring :(, no giants rock, long long in, and for those who noticed, a Spitfire buzzing the beach repeatedly.
So, what did you think? 🙂