On a grey wet Saturday morning at South Oxhey Playing Fields, Watford 44 brave soles were set a challenging but rewarding test on a course that wouldn’t been out of place on a cross country race!

With over 140 acres of beautiful parkland has have had a sporting history stretching back over 100 years with it being a golf course between 1912-53, after that date it became the South Oxhey Playing Fields as it is known today, with everything from rugby, cricket and now football played on it’s land!

It was great to find that back in 1989 local residents fought a successful campaign to stop the local council from developing this site for housing, it is important to keep local green spaces for generations to come, well done South Oxhey!!!!

Also it was great to meet Jacqui Fenton-Collins and her guide Nedret Robertson today, may I say your smile brightened up the dullest of day’s and top running in those difficult conditions!

Course

The course is 3 clockwise laps of the parameter of the playing fields that surface is completely run on grass! This is not a flat course with a steady incline up to the far end of the course, the good thing though it is all downhill to the finish of each lap!

Points to note

• Borderline today but ideally trail shoes should be used on this course in wet conditions for secure footing
• Mole hills seem a problem so be careful as the subsided ones could trip you up or catch your foot!

So if you are up for a challenge of this course and love cross country style parkruns then South Oxley is the event for you! My time was 37:20 need to hit those hills back home!

Facilities

There is a free car park at the Pavilion pub Sat Nav WD19 4LT that is situated very close to the start of the parkrun, also available before the start is a disabled toilet!

For a post run coffee it was very welcome to see the resident mobile cafe arrive and far as I am aware there are discounted prices available for park runners, nice one 🙂

For locals the playing fields boast 6 adult and 1 junior size football pitch available for the community to use!

Final Verdict

I would like to thank Stuart Rosewell and his team of volunteers for making us all feel extremely welcome on a cold wet day!

I must admit South Oxhey you may be small in numbers but you make up for that with a great community spirt, within 5 minutes of your company I felt I was at home running and that is a rare precious gift, top work everyone!!!!

So hopefully South Oxhey I will to be back one day,

Best

Mark

Extra News

I would like to congratulated today two good friends and Luton, Wardown parkrun stalwarts  Dave Smith who ran his 250th parkrun and Alan Bullimore completing his 100th parkrun, brilliant achievement guys!

I would like to also add that Alan and his good lady Kathy have supported, run with me on a number of my parkrun adventures, with your company always extremely welcome and appreciated!!!

See you all on 16th December!

Event 66 Cassiobury 18-11-17