Where to start on this blog post, the beautiful Nonsuch park and mansion steeped in history, my milestone of completing all 58 parkruns inside the M25 area, no quite simple on this occasion the lost of a friend and a parkrun tourist brethern!

Mark Sherwood – A tourist friend

I have been so lucky to meet so many lovely people on my parkrun adventures and Mark was up their with the best of them, what I knew of him was a kind unassuming man that let his running do the talking!!!

My happiest memory of Mark was at Vicky’s 100th event celebration at Cassiobury parkrun, where Mark was running his 99th parkrun and with great fun he went and gave us all a Cadburys 99 ice cream to celebrate his feat, top gesture from a top man!

He has only just completed his 100th different UK parkrun event that is my current goal and I will be now dedicating this challenge under Mark’s name!

RIP Mark

Nonsuch history

It is great to come to Nonsuch park with such a rich history that started in 1538 when then King Henry VIII built the splendid Nonsuch palace with the name came from the boast this palace was, “none such place like it” in Europe!

It survived until 1682 where it was demolished by Charles II then mistress Barbara, Countess of Castlemaine who decided to raise the palace to the ground and use the building material to pay off gambling debts!

Today their are markers in the park to show where the palace once stood and the Friends of Nonsuch have commissioned a beautiful recreated model of what the palace once looked like in all it’s splendour and is available to view by the general public at the Nonsuch mansion house!

Initiative

First for me on my parkrun travels Nonsuch parkrun have introduced at their event the Nonsuch 5K+ that is all about how to improve as a runner, it starts at 8:30am before the parkrun. This week we had a lecture expertly delivered by Tim Jones on nutrition. I love these initiatives especially as in being a running coach!!!

Course

The course is just under 2 clockwise flat laps of Nonsuch park that is made up of a mixture of surfaces from tarmac to grass surfaces!

Points to note

• The grass surface in wet or icy conditions should be run with a degree of care
• There is little or no elevation making it again in the right conditions when the ground is firm for a very fast course!

I decided to run the course steady and gather my thoughts, I would like to thank Angela Sandy Ambrose for allowing me to join her excellent one minute walk/run group! I had to finish my final parkrun inside the M25 by crossing the finish line with my very good parkrun friend Robert Kidd, time 47:40

Robert have a great christmas and enjoy your 250 parkrun celebrations in the new year mate!!!

Facilities

There is free car parking area’s dotted around the park and toilet facilities are available at Nonsuch mansion before the start of the parkrun that is always great news!

For the obligatory post run coffee we retired to the Nonsuch Pantry café that was very welcome sight on the coldest of morning runs!

Also I would throughly recommend walking around the gardens at Nonsuch mansion especially in summer and take a look around Service Wing Museum and Nonsuch Palace Gallery if you have time!

Final verdict

I would like to thank the run director Jane Bransgrove and her team for making everyone feel at home, I love the way the event was organised given the size of the field with over 400 runners, top marks guys!!!

So if you want to run a fast parkrun time in a beautiful park steeped in history then Nonsuch park is the event for you and in my case a great location to finish running all the parkruns inside the M25!

Thank you Nonsuch

Best

Mark

Extra News

Back at my home parkrun of Luton, Wardown it is my great pleasure to announce two very good friends reached their respective 100 parkrun club this weekend, Geoffrey White and Philip Davies!

For the record Geoffrey in orange is one of the parkrun legends at Luton and has the honour of being fastest man with a walking stick reaching speeds/times some runners would envy!

Now in Philip case is a fellow Stopsley Strider club member with a bright future, just last month he broke the magical parkrun barrier of sub 20 mins, brilliant effort sir!!!!
See you all over the festive holiday Luton!

Event 70-71 MK double new year header