Where do you start at Cassiobury park, Watford on a day of parkrun milestone celebrations, well you start of with the beautiful park itself of course!

Cassiobury for over 250 years was once the home of the Earls of Essex, then in 1909 part of the estate including Cassiobury House (unfortunately demolished in 1927) was purchased Watford Borough Council to make way for this splendid 190 aces park that we see today!

Included in its boundary is a local nature reserve and on the west side the Grand union canal runs by all to delight park users!

I would like congratulate the lovely Vicky Hamblin on celebrating her 100th Cowell event at Cassiobury today that means completing 100 different parkrun events, brilliant effort!!

Also thanks again for allowing me to be part of the Basingstoke crew that is a top bunch of tourist that I am delighted to call you my friends!

It is always great to meet fellow Stopsley Striders club members who have shared my parkrun adventures over the last 16 months, always good to see Liz Davies and many thanks for coming along today!

Course

The course is 2.5 anticlockwise laps that is a very flat & fast tarmac surface that starts at the Rickmansworth road entrance and finish funnel is beside the cafe.

Points to note!

• This is a very popular parkrun with over 300 runners each week, so I would recommend place yourself at the start where you think you will finish the race otherwise it will mean a lot of overtaking on the grass!
• large parts of this course is tree lined so in wet conditions in the autumn could get very slippery
• There is white-painted line down the middle on some sections of the path on the course that indicate cycle lane that is on the inside part of the path, so be care and ideally stay on the walking side of these lines for safety!

So if you want to test yourself and see how faster time you can achieve then Cassiobury is definitely the course to run, it easily matches Dulwich & Hackney Marshes for PB style courses.

My time and not being really fit at the moment was 33.29 that indicates how fast this course is to run!

Facilities

Parking for this event is at Watford tube station Sat Nav WD18 7LE please note that if you are paying by cash it will be £2.20 for all day Saturday! Before the parkrun started the station staff at Watford station kindly let us use the toilets on the station platform!

For the obligatory post run coffee we retired to the lovely The Cha Cafe that is situated inside the park and for the kids has a children’s play area! I would also like to add that they made Vicky day even more special by helping taking photos and promoting her on their Facebook page, great touch guys!!

Final verdict

I would like to thank Alistair Balderson and his team of volunteers for making us feel extremely welcome today! So finally you are looking for a PB style beautiful course then Cassiobury is a must for you!

Extra News

Today was a large number of parkrun milestones that I must mention starting off with my two very good parkrun buddies Kevin Brown & Paul Bliss who have cheered me on and kept me company on my adventures!

100 club

For Kevin it was his 100th Cowell parkrun event at Hackney Marshes, London and Paul run his 100th parkrun at Cannon Hill, Birmingham. Well done to both of your and I look forward to bump into you again in the near future!

99 club

Crazy but we had lot of Vicky’s friends on 99 parkrun milestones yesterday including Karen & John Coles both on 99 different events and Wendy Hewett just needing one more for running 100 parkrun, have a great time on your 100 events guys and eat plenty of cake afterwards!

PS Mark I loved the 99 ice cream touch yesterday mate!

50 club

It was great to hear very good friends in Beccy Shotbolt and Sharon Roberts both celebrating their respective 50th parkrun at my home event of Luton ,Wardown. Miss you guy’s and love the hair, may need to borrow it one day 🙂

Event 67 Dartford 25-11-17