This event no longer takes place.

A first for me I am writing a review of a stunningly beautiful parkrun based at Hatfield Forest that will be relocating Castle Park, Bishop’s Stortford in just over a months time due to popularity of this event and the pressure the forest winter car park!

So where do you start with Hatfield forest, well for one thing this very well maintained National Trust forest is as the Trust states,

“Hatfield Forest is the best surviving example in Britain of an almost complete Royal Hunting Forest. It has seen many owners, from Kings to commoners. No other Forest on earth evokes the atmosphere of a medieval hunting Forest so completely.”

A could not agree anymore, I think it would take a day of exploring to be able fully grasp the beauty of the forest and the animals that inhabit it!

Again today it was great to see so many Cow Cowl tourists in one place, making sure they had a chance to run this parkrun before it goes! Special mention to fellow tourist Trevor Rawson and his lovely dog Teddy, it is great to see that when Teddy gets tired Trevor has a brilliant dog rucksack that he puts him in so they can run the rest of the 5k course together, this is another reason why I love parkrun and the people who run it every week!

Course

As the last parkrun event at Hatfield is on the 23rd September 2017 it is great to see the core team choosing different used in the past routes each week, today we were given the winter course to run that included the informs Bridge of Doom that has legendary status with the locals 🙂

The course itself is one single clockwise lap that incorporated a number of different surfaces, from grass, trail dirt through the woods and tarmac road section!

Point to note

• There was one pinch point on this course at the wooden gate next to a cattle grid on the road section as the gate used by runners in both directions of this loopback section! To be fair it was well marshalled there and it wasn’t a real issue if you were careful!

Time for me today was irreverent at 41:10 just happy to be their taking pictures and enjoying this forest parkrun!

Important Info

There is a paid £2 grass summer car park available at Sat Nav CM22 6NE and this is about half of a mile from the start at Shell House and for a post run coffee they use the forest cafe!

Final verdict

I would like to thank Susan Anderson and her time of volunteers for making us all feel extremely welcome, the course was laid out very clearly and well marshalled, excellent job guys!

So if you get a chance to run this beautiful forest before in relocates after 23rd September event, just do it!!!

Finally I would like to wish all the very best to Chris Holt and the rest of the core parkrun team on your relocation and I promise to visit once you have settle in your new home,

best Mark

Event 58 Inverness 03-09-17