What a brilliant concept Junior parkruns are and today I just had to support Houghton Hall my local event as a marshal! So for the record in 2014 parkrun UK organised junior parkrun series that now has 190 events held over the UK every Sunday morning!

It’s great to see kids aged between 4-14 enjoy running 2K around their local park and what a lovely park Houghton Hall is to visit, with Lottery Funding of over 2 Million pounds they have turned this into a must go venue for the local community to enjoy!

Course

The course is two anticlockwise 1k laps of the parameter of the park that is a mixture of gravel and grass surfaces!

Grass Marshal point 5

Gravel path surface

Points to note

• In very wet weather the course could very get muddy in parts of the grass section
• 11 marshal points evenly spaced out to make sure the competitors are safe

So it is a great course for them to have fun!

Facilities

Free parking and toilets are situated by the new visitor centre, the issue is that this centre car park does not seem to have a post code and the one issued on their website you end up at Houghton Hall business park.

The only Sat Nav directions I can give for people coming by car is coordinates that you can put in your phone or click on this link 51.901548, -0.509044

For the post run coffee we retired back to the visitor centre that was very welcome on a cold day 🙂

Final Verdict

I would like to thank the run director Nicola and the fellow volunteers with a number of them very good friends from either my club or Wardown parkrun for creating a safe brilliant environment for kids to enjoy running, top work guys!!!

So mums and dads I can thoroughly recommend from the bottom of my heart that once your kids have tried junior parkrun they will love it!

Best

Mark