With it being a cross country weekend and temperatures well below freezing, there were still an impressive 40 members who braved the weather, of which 16 were at Wendover Woods, 9 at Dunstable Downs and 6 at Rushmere. Many of the parkruns were in foggy conditions but those higher up such as Dunstable Downs were rewarded with great views over the top of the fog.
Good to see the New Year’s resolutions in action with 23 of you having a 100% record at the 3 parkruns so far in 2025.
Well done to Lynda Hembury who finished 2nd female at Wendover Woods and to Louise Bladen who was 3rd female at Dunstable Downs.
Angelo and Ros were our furthest travelled in the UK with their trip to Exeter Riverside, an out and back route alongside the River Exe. This was their second trip to Exeter on their FA Cup adventure. Exeter City had a surprise win against championship side Oxford United and reach the 4th round of the competition for the first time in 44 years! So no easy drive to Oxford but instead a 3rd trip to Exeter for Angelo and Ros! Exeter will now face high-flying Premiership opposition with Nottingham Forest the visitors, so I suspect that will end the Exeter trips. Last week the quaintly named Greendale Farm Shop parkrun opened near Exeter so perhaps that will be their next visit?
This week 2 members were running in New Zealand and both on North Island. Hermione Houston was back at Hobsonville Point but our furthest travelled award this week goes to Chris Grimmette with his visit to South End Reserve parkrun, a relatively new one and he is the first from Tring to visit. It is an out and back course running alongside the grassed foreshore of the beach.
Well done to Richard Baddon for collecting his best token with barcode 100 this week.
Did you have a guess at our most popular “H’s”? Unsurprisingly Houghton Hall was 1st, followed by Hampstead Heath (primarily thanks to Jim Morris and Kevin Berg) and then Holkham on the Norfolk coastline. So, we move on to the “I’s”. Between us we have only visited 8 different “I’s” and in fact only one TRC member has visited the same “I” more than once. So that might make your guessing easier this week, or maybe not.
Our next TRC trip is on 25th January at Rushmere. This coincides with the 2025 Off-road championships. Further details can be found here https://www.parkrun.org.uk/rushmere/course/
Hope to see you there.
Andy Evans