Well, we certainly spread ourselves out this week!
Elizabeth O’Mahony finished her tour of parkruns down under with an early start at Kamay in the Sydney suburbs, You can read how much Elizabeth enjoyed her Australian parkrun experience in this great report she sent (with lots of photos). Also down under, but at her new “home” run of Cottesloe, Maria Duenas was running in 35° heat – luckily they provided ice lollies for the participants!
Back in the UK, Tara Hipwood was in her native South Wales and Dave Roberts returned to his roots in the West Midlands at the very Brummy-sounding Babbs Mill. Heading north, Rachel Hurdman ran at a fairly new venue of Muncaster Castle, near Ravenglass in Cumbria. On the other side of the Pennines, Gill Milne and I went to a venue familiar to a number of Claremonters, and renowned as one of the most scenic parkruns, at Fountains Abbey.
Fountains Abbey and the Studley Royal estate is somewhere that we know quite well, having visited a number of times over the last 40 years or so. It has a bit of everything for the visitor – with the majestic ruined Abbey and landscaped gardens and lakes, all in a fairly steep wooded valley, complete with a herd of deer. Everyone we know who has run here has spoken its praises, so I had been looking forward to this parkrun for a quite some time. However, the experience wasn’t quite as I had imagined! It was a dull, misty morning with poor visibility – not really a day for appreciating the beauty of our surroundings! We arrived to find the car park already full, so it took some time to find a bit of space to leave the car in and a quick warm-up jog down the hill was required to reach the start line on time. The start was already crowded with nearly 500 runners lined up on a fairly narrow path, so patience was required until the field started to this out. Visibility may have been poor, but the combination of mist, ruins, lakes and trees was very atmospheric. Must go back to run it in the sunshine one day!
Also in North Yorkshire, at Dalby Forest near Pickering, was Holly Porter. The course must have been to Holly’s liking as she ran her fastest ever time for a parkrun (though not officially a PB as she was a first-timer at this venue).
There were some notable achievements in the North East too. Paul Robinson and Heather Steel crossed the Tyne from their home run at Saltwell Park to mark Paul’s 250th parkrun on the Town Moor, where he ran his very first one.
Simon Lowe finished in 2nd place at South Shields and there were a number of PBs. Roberto Marzo must have run without the pushchair as he clocked an impressive time for his PB at Prudhoe, and Sophie Douglas ran a Jesmond Dene PB. There were two PBs at Leazes Park – Laurie Johnson dipping under 19 minutes and Niamh Garratt breaking the 30 minute barrier. Well done to all.
