Oxford Hash House Harriers

About Us

We run every Wednesday, at 1900, on a hash trail somewhere in Oxford or the neighbouring area. We also serve food and drink at a "beer stop" at the end of the trail. Newcomers and visitors are always welcome: just turn up at one of our forthcoming runs.

A Brief History of Oxford Hash

The Oxford Hash started out of conflict. Daglocks, in trying to avoid a nasty divorce situation, decided to take a gap year and see a bit of the world. He disappeared from Bicester Hash for around eighteen months then, in August, re-appeared with a new wife and a great idea – lets start a Hash!! As I pointed out at the original meeting we already had two hashes in the area, Bicester and B.U.M's, with M.K. and Berkshire not a mega distance away. Ladybird was actually running regularly with Berkshire at that time. However Daglocks insisted that it was time Oxford had it's own hash run along the lines of the far eastern Hashes that he had run with in Thailand. "We need lots of Down-Downs and food on every run" he insisted "It works brilliantly in Thailand".

Of course it does where the evening temperature drops to a chilly 27 centigrade, and just as an afterthought, what about drink driving?

Despite the scepticism of most of those present we reluctantly agreed that it might work. "When do you propose to start it?" asked Wha de Say.
"The beginning of October" replied Daglocks.
"Don’t be so bloody stupid, you want to have a Hash with down-down's and hot food at every run and you are going to start it in October with dark, cold nights coming on?"
"Yes, do you want to be the R.A.?"
"Piss off."

However Daglocks can be quite persuasive and I agreed that I would take the job on under the conditions that I would stand down when the numbers fell to single figures by the turn of the year!

We then proceeded to advertise the new Hash by putting flyers up in all the University colleges, as Daglocks wanted to target a younger group of people. He felt that Bicester was getting a bit long in the tooth to attract younger hashers. We also spent a few weekends handing out flyers to joggers in the city. The result of all this activity was notable by it’s singular lack of success in attracting anyone new to hashing and by run 10 we only ever had two students running with us.

As part of the promotion of the Hash Lockjaw, who had a friend working for Central news, said that he would get him along to film the inaugural run. More scepticism followed, however on the 6th of October 1999 at The Royal Oak on Woodstock Road a film crew turned up and interviewed Daglocks and myself and proceeded to follow us as we laid the trail around the old part of town.

As we neared the pub after laying the trail we were a bit apprehensive regarding how many people would actually be there and were astounded to find about 80 hashers waiting for the off. The food that night, and for many runs afterwards was Thai curry provided by Oyeh, Daglock’s new wife.

The rest as they say is history and the smallest run I can remember was one where there was a tremendous dump of snow, just before the start, that paralysed Oxford, and even on that run we had around fifteen. Hashers from the first run that still run regularly are Lockjaw, Ladybird, Fagend, Dingaling, Pony Express and Wha de Say with others who turn up occasionally.

Wha de Say, November 2007.