It was a real joy to be back in my home county of Bedfordshire running event 9 at Great Denham. This village is based on the banks of the river the Great Ouse and is on the western outskirts of Bedford that at present is being transformed as I speak with the current building of eventually 1,500 new homes on the south side of this village!

 

Great Touch

I real lovely tribute from Great Denham (unofficially other parkrun events held as well)  to Matthew Campbell Maste Chef fininalist who sadly died while running last weeks London marathon for charity in his father’s name!

This entailed if you wished after finishing the parkrun completing an extra 0.6 mile course that they laid out away from the main course!

So if you run the extra the total distance would total 3.7 miles and that was the tragic distance that Matthew was from the finish of the marathon!

This has touched a raw nerve in me especially after very recently losing my dad and I am running  my challenge in his and my good tourist running friend Mark Sherwood’s name. I applaud Noel and the core team for allowing us to run this tribute!!!!

Running Friends

One of my joys of being a parkrun tourist is meeting up again at a parkrun event with this time club running friends in Terry Willis, daughter Kim Caddy (both in picture) and husband Chris, also always a pleasure see again top tourist buddy Kevin Brown in the Exeter City shirt left of picture!

Course

The course is two very flat fast anticlockwise laps of this new park that start by the and end near the children’s play area. The terrain is a mixture of gravel and tarmac paths and in the right conditions a PB style parkrun course to run!

Points to note

• Sharp turn on the first corner so beware
• The course after prolonged periods of run is prone to flooding and an event recently was cancelled
• Definitely a trainers running shoe course

Results Event 9

As I have been given the great honour of writing this weeks run report for Great Denham

In a field of 131 runners there was 42 first timers to Great Denham with the first runner home was Steven Baldwin in 17:42 and second male was James Shiner just behind in 17:52. First female was Alice Ritchie in 20:03 with second female was Joanne GOULD 23:49

Also congratulations go to both Eric Cooper and Shawn Busby both respectfully joining the 100 parkrun completed club, excellent work guys!

My time was 34:16 not to bad at all 🙂

Facilities

The facilities at this park as the rest of the New Great Denham housing development is evolving, so at present there is no on site parking or toilet facilities!

This hopefully will be rectified soon with the building of a new cafe with parking that is already almost built which located near the start of this parkrun!

So preferred free car park at the moment is at MK40 4FA that is about 0.8 of a mile from the start of this event and for the post run coffee at present they retire to The Eatery

Finally there is a well equipped children’s playground that is great fun with some of us tourists testing it out for research purposes of course  🙂

 

Final Verdict

I would like to thank the everyone involved at Great Denham especially the volunteers for making us feel extremely warmly welcome on the coldest of spring days, top work guy’s!!

So finally it will be great to go back in the future when everything is finished and the park has matured I am sure it will be a sight to behold, so in the meantime I throughly recommend Great Denham to my tourist friends as a PB hotspot kind of event!!

Best

Mark aka Silent Runner

Event 85 Huntingdon 05-05-2018