NOTICE: If, on the day of the hash, the weather looks as if it might threaten the run, telephone the Hashmaster on 837681.
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Here is a list of the Bashes we know something about this year. Some dates are provisionally set (if at all) and are liable to change slightly.
Dorres, Pyrenées-Oriental
, France; Wednesday, 28th May at a time TB.Mountains, Roman baths, French cuisine. Hmmm.
Contact the Inskips at inskip at andorra dot ad or 850019 for more info ASAP.
On to Our History | To the Menu
The co-principality of Andorra, snuggling in the eastern Pyrenees mountains between France and Spain, is probably unique in having a population of which the majority are ex-patriates. However, most of these are Spanish or French, who do not have a hashing tradition, so it was not until the mid-eighties that there were enough British around for the idea of setting up a Hash to surface.
The first run of the Andorra chapter of the Hash House Harriers took place on the 6th, September 1986 and was set by the founder, Paul Bruton and his wife, Terry, who have since moved on to pastures new. There have been 708 more since then with an average pack of 27. Membership is open to anyone but, because of the altitude and terrain, a certain degree of fitness is recommended. Currently, as well as Brits, the pack has representatives from Scandinavian, North American, and Western European countries and even a few locals!
The Hash meets on Saturdays between April and the end of December. During the rest of the year the country is mostly covered in snow and the hashers take to the ski slopes. The current start time is 3:00 pm but it varies with the season and some Bashes exhibit idiosyncrasies in this respect. As it occurs during our Hash Hibernation we do not have a dedicated Gispert Memorial Run but we feel that because G's family roots are in Catalunya (thus making a link, albeit tenuous, with Andorra) every hash we run is a fitting tribute to him.
On to ...And How | To the Menu
A 'Hash' is a strenuous walk following a trail of marks for about 60-90 minutes. Usually there are also one or two easier trails for the less energetic. You can run if you wish but most do not. At the end of the hash there are free beers and soft drinks.
A Hash is organised in a different part of Andorra each Saturday from April to December, and the trail is set by a different person (the 'hare') each week. The location is announced at the hash the previous week, and by email and, of course, at the top of this site.
After you have done ten hashes and been a hare you are presented with a Hash T-shirt. You get another award after 25, 50 and 100 hashes, providing you have been a hare since the previous award.
'Hash Bashes' in the form of dinners, picnics and barbecues are held about six times each year. For dinners in restaurants you get a subsidy if you have done five hashes in the last twelve months, and a larger subsidy if you have done ten hashes and been a hare. Recently we have also organised an annual two-day 'Away Hash' staying at a hotel in France or Spain.
Each hasher pays a fee (currently 2 Euros) for each week that he takes part, to pay for the drinks, the awards, the subsidies and some small expenses. School-age children are free.
Andorra is high, the countryside can be tough and the Hash House Harriers do not know if you are fit enough to take part. You do so entirely at your own risk and you need to be sure that you have the right clothes, equipment and accident insurance.
You can contact the Hash by following the Contact Us link.
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DO NOT TAKE ANY RISKS.
Hash trails are marked with lines or arrows of white flour or chalk, or strips of toilet paper. There should be a mark at least every hundred paces and at junctions of paths Ð if there is not, you may be going wrong and you should re-trace your steps. If you come to a circle with radial lines marked S, M and L, it indicates alternative trails (short, medium and long) which you can choose depending how fit you are feeling.
A 'Check point' is a circle with radial lines. Only one of the radial lines is the correct trail. The other(s) are 'false trails'. A false trail will have two more marks at the usual intervals and then a large cross. If you come to a cross, you have to go back to the check point and try again. If you pass three good marks, you know you are on the correct trail.
Those at the front should call 'ON-ON' occasionally to indicate to followers that they are on the correct track. These calls should be repeated in relay down the line to help those further back and to reassure stragglers.
At the end of each hash we check that everyone is back. ABORT: If you discontinue the Hash before the end you MUST let someone know, otherwise we will waste a lot of time looking for you.
On to Hash History | To the Menu
This is a short introduction to the international phenomenon that is the Hash House Harriers. For another take on Hash History see what the UK Hash has to say.
The sport of Hares and Hounds has been around for a long time. Developed from the country pursuit of Hare Coursing probably during times when game was sparse, it consisted of a runner, the hare, setting off with a supply of paper scraps with which to lay a trail, or scent. Some minutes later the rest of the participants, the hounds or pack, set off after the hare and try to pick up the scent. This done they follow the trail and the game finishes either if the hare is caught, the pack give up the chase or a pre-defined finishing point, often the starting point, is reached. The sport is also known as Paper Chase or Paper Hunt' and the clubs known as Harriers. In recent times the sport has declined in favour of ball games and Harriers clubs are now mostly track athletics outfits with a notable exception.....
In the 1930's there was still an Empire and British citizens could be found on every continent spreading their culture, including Harriers clubs.
One such citizen, Albert Stephen Ignatius Gispert (known to his friends, and hereafter referred to, as G
), was an accountant working for a firm which had several branches in the far East. He was also a keen paper chaser and when, in 1938, he was transferred to Kuala Lumpur he discovered that the city did not have a functioning Harriers club. So he formed one. The initial discussions had taken place in the Selangor Club Chambers, whose cuisine was definitely not haute
and was known to its clientele as the Hash House
, so it was decided that the club would be named the Hash House Harriers and G had the brilliant but simple idea of putting the emphasis on the social side rather than the competitive aspect of the sport. This almost certainly accounts for the popularity and persistance of the hash and definitely accounts for the description of hashers best put as drinkers with a running problem
.
For the next 3 years hashes were ran regularly and they celebrated the 100th run in August 1941. Then the Japanese invaded and all frivolous activity stopped. Unfortunately, G did not survive the hostilities but was killed in action on February 11th, 1942. Many hashes stage a memorial run on or about the anniversary.
After the war, a founder member Ronald Torch
Bennett (hashers are fond of nicknames or Hash Handles) re-established the hash which ran on Monday evenings. For the next few years, during the Communist insurgence in the Malay peninsular, hashes continued to be run often courting disapproval from the authorities.
The hash's spread across the world was not instantaneous. It is generally agreed that the second chapter was formed in Bordighera, Italy in 1947 and was popular with British ex-servicemen. In the early '60's it too stopped, for different reasons, but was re-established in 1984. The third hash started in Singapore in 1962 followed by a gradual spread through Malaysia and Indonesia and by the time the Kuala Lumpur Hash, now referred to as the Mother Hash, ran its 1500th event in 1973 there were 35 known chapters around the world. Servicemen, diplomats and oil-workers have mainly been responsible for seeding the global hash community and it is reckoned that about 2000 hashes are active today.
On to What is a Hash? | To the Menu
As implied above, the Hash House Harriers does not take itself too seriously and, indeed, has a MIS-management structure. The mis-management committee consists of at least a Hash Master and an On-Sec (honourary secretary) although in small hashes they may be the same person. Most chapters will have two Joint Masters, a Hash Cash (treasurer), a Haberdasher (who looks after the inventory of shirts etc. given out as awards), a Beer Master (responsible for the supply of drinks at the Down-Down), a Hare Raiser (persuader of usually reluctant hounds to change their genus for a week), a Religious Advisor (guardian of hash traditions, Master-of-Ceremonies) and a Hash Scribe (who does things like this). There are other posts which could be filled but many hashes have difficulty finding enough volunteers to serve in those mentioned. The committee is elected periodically, the term is usually one year, but often the only way to get off it is to re-locate!
The committee's main purpose is to ensure the week-to-week functioning of the chapter. Important things like policy matters are best left to a general conscensus known as the Whim of the Pack
.
To become a member of a hash is simplicity itself. Just find out where the nearest one is being held and turn up. Although there are a few hashes with traditions of restricted membership the vast majority are open to everyone with the one proviso that they have a sense of humour! There are no membership cards and no obligation to take part every week but many hashes endeavour to keep your custom by offering bribes such as tee-shirts and stuff when a certain number of runs have been completed (often a turn at being a hare is also required to qualify). Hashes which do this and those which don't finish at pubs but supply drinks at the Down-Down tend to charge a small subscription to cover costs.
As mentioned earlier, the social side of hashing is more important than the exercise and throughout the year the mis-managment will organise several non-running events called Hash Bashes. These typically involve things like dinners, barbecues and pic-nics and some subscription hashes
subsidise the cost of these to regular hashers.
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In this section you can read the latest 3 run reports. The list in the menu might not concur with the last 3 runs actually done because only runs with reports posted will appear.
As a consequence, the behaviour of the section differs from past when the run, with or without report, appeared in the list 36 hours after it was completed. This gives the Hash Scribe a little more leeway and avoids the appearance of mostly blank pages.
The Hash Scribe will endeavour to post his reports within a day or so but in the unlikely event that it takes him more than 3 weeks a report might not even make this section. It would, though, eventually show up in the Archive which will contain runs that never get reported on as well.
If the report has more than one photograph, you can view the others by selecting them from the menu.
Whoops! This site is under constant improvement but one change I made to the workings of the main page broke the workings of the Archive page. I think I have fixed it now. Sorry if this has affected you.
Apologies to those still waiting to read some 2002 reports. Now I think I have settled on a system I shall try to start adding them to the archive one by one.
To view an archive report, go to the Archive page and in the menu select a year (when necessary), type the run number into the little box and push the 'Go' button. The most recent report is already available to view from that menu.
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There are no technical notes at the moment.
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This document has been tested with the Cynthia Says accessibility validator which says that it complies with Level A of both the World Wide Web Consortium and United States Section 508
guidelines and passes the alternate text for images
test.
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The old e-mail contact link was a disaster (unless you like spam) so here is a form-based way to get a message to us. The message will only be seen by the Webmaster who will pass it on if necessary. Markup is not allowed.
Now it seems that the 'comment spammers' have caught up with us. So there is a simple question you have to answer correctly for your message to be successfully sent. If that does not work I will just have to ban @gmail addresses!
On to RSS News Feed | To the Menu
RSS stands for Rich Site Summary, RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication. Whatever name you use the effect is the same. RSS provides a summary of the important content of a web site with links to the relevant pages. The web site provides an address for the feed which the user enters into a desktop RSS reader, such as FeedDemon (Windows) or NetNewsWire (Mac OSX), the active bookmarks feature of the Firefox browser, the feeds feature of recent Opera browser releases, Apple's Safari 2+ or Internet Explorer 7 which has finally joined the party. This is called 'Subscribing'.Then, when on-line, if you refresh the reader or activate the active bookmark you see the latest headlines of all the feeds you subscribe to. Select a headline that looks interesting, read the short description and, if it is really interesting, follow the link to the site. This saves a lot of trawling through loads of sites with your browser or waiting for e-mail newsletters to arrive
RSS is known as a News feed because it is mainly used by News organisations like the BBC. It is not limited to that though, many web resources, e.g. weblogs, weather sites, job search sites, lend themselves to RSS. The Hash run and Bashes lists do so, too.
There is currently only one feed from this site. It contains the locations of the next few runs and the location, date and time of the next Bash if any exist. It is updated automatically when a location is added or edited and its address is http://www.andorrahash.org/nextevents.rss .
This feed works particularly well with the Firefox browser and should behave itself in any feed reader or aggregator that claims to support RSS 2.0. Which is most of them.
