2 disappointed hares, they'd laid the trail in the rain and wind, taken each out for a new-year-celebratory-2-day-late-anniverary meal and were then looking forward to returning to a warm cosy fire as surely no one would actually turn out for another wet full moon?

WRONG!!!

The faithful returned, even Highway who travelled many miles from a county north, whose name reminds me of a magazine that will haunt my memories of 2006! Slowly a small squircle developed in the town of mini fairly traded roundabouts.

We were promised tarmac, water and shiggy - right on all accounts - not sure what the shiggy actually was but it didn't smell too good. Luckily GM hare kindly accompanied us - scared that your trail wasn't clear enough?

After a sneaky loop enough to raise our hopes that this really was a short run as we headed back to the carpark, but no we were off away from roads and towards dark and flooded river paths. Masterbaker's good sense prevailed and he engineered a very convincing hash crash and so returned by hare-mobile to the circle looking remarkably flour-less - not living down to your appellation MB!

Meanwhile we slipped and slided around the country lanes on both sides of the M6, including checks and a devious fish hook for those who don't like motorway bridges. A strangely decorated vehicle was spotted at all junctions kerb crawling (except there were no kerbs!) Poor hash dog Harry didn't know whether to lie down or keep on leading the pack. Returning 28 minutes late (something must have been wrong) we completed r*n 209 with a mini squircle

D2s:

• MasterBaker - hash crash
• Highway - applellation liver upper
• Hares - because they were hares

We retired to the wheatsheaf, beacuse it was there, and then decided it would be better to take our smelly bodies northwards.

A jolly good start to the new year - thanks MTs