| Date | Hare | Scribe |
|---|---|---|
| 22 Feb 2026 | Des | Kevin |
I hadn’t visited Calne since 1982 when I was there looking at a potential business opportunity. This was just after the Harris pork factory had closed down – pigs in one end, sausages and pies out the other. I never knew at the time what a rich history the town had and thought nothing more then that its economy was all about bacon, until Des opened my eyes with his hash. Before bacon Calne was a wool town established along the river Marden, now it is centred more on commercial and IT services and is expanding its population.
Des had put a lot of muddy leg work into organising this hash, finding a suitable venue in The Wheatsheaf, and exploring to find points of interest for the trails he would lay. The Wheatsheaf is a rarity these days, a pub that just sells beer (and other sorts of libations) without food other than crisps and nuts. The pub is very accommodating if patrons want to bring in their own food to consume on the premises with their libations, which a couple of hashers decided to do.
Before the start of the hash there was a good discussion as to the pronunciation of Calne, and as we are a group of many dialects, including some who are born and bred in Wiltshire, and there were a few of us who offered our interpretation of pronouncing Calne as in “James Caan” – Calne (/kɑːn/) – but Des, as a local, thought otherwise and seemed to be pronouncing the letter ‘L’.
Before the off and Des’s briefing I took the group photo with everyone lining up along the Wheatsheaf’s best side. Des then explained that the long was exactly 5 miles and the short just over 2½ miles and there would be about 10 blue plaques to observe along the way which he had marked with 3 dots of flour .: The blue plaques were not just to mark the presence of prominent people but also of events and locations of interest.
On! On! and off we followed Des’s trail out to the Castlefield Canal and River Park where Kathy took a photo of the forecasting stone which was displaying a degree of accuracy “STONE IS DRY – NOT RAINING”, perhaps our Met forecasters could come to Calne and learn a thing or two.
The trails brought us back into town where Des’s special hash mark pointed out a number of points of interest including the home of poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner) while writing his autobiography “Biographia Literaria”, the home of Joseph Priestley (discoverer of Oxygen), the Alms houses and eventually back to The Wheatsheaf.
I don’t know if it was by coincidence or design but the hashers who took the long trail and those that took the short returned at the same time for the après.
The drinks were considerably cheaper than our normal venues, some hashers enjoyed local take away food and some bought sandwiches and pizza. I thanked Des for his effort in researching Calne, finding The Wheatsheaf and laying trails of such interest!