Amazing how time flies by its almost 10 months ago I run one of the last events at the stunning location of Hatfield Forest on 26th August 2017 and then decided from that point on to target reaching 100 different parkrun events locations!

 

So today I am running at the lovely Castle Park, Bishop Stotford in Hertfordshire their new relocated home for their event no 38 and my 89 different one!

 

Development plans – Castle Park

I always find great deal of delight when local councils with the aid of lottery funding council work together to create a masterplan to improve local green spaces for the community can relax and enjoy!

So in this instance they have combined the two parks of Castle Gardens & Sworder’s Field into one park namely Castle park with the aim of creating as they say a community hub. This is to promotes wildlife and celebrate the rich history of Waytemore Castle that is on these grounds through conservation and different organised events!

Top work and I hope you get the additional lottery funding applied for to finish off this noble project!

 

Pirate challenge –  complete

Just in case you were wondering why I was dressed as a pirate at this parkrun it was to complete one of the parkrun running challenges, which entails running 7 parkruns starting with the letter C and 1 with R 🙂

These challenges are great fun for any self-respecting parkrun enthusiast, but I must admit I am struggling at the moment in completing the stopwatch-bingo challenge 🙂

Celebrations

It was good that parkrun UK this weekend celebrated the upcoming NHS70 day by inviting parkrun events around the UK to give a huge thanks for the sterling work the NHS do in our communities!

In Castle Park’s case at the run briefing the run director Kevin asked all NHS staff attending this event come up in front of everyone so we could all applaud the selfless work they do in their daily lives, class touch guy’s!!!!

Also I had the pleasure of meeting Chris Marsh and his son Timothy aged 5 who was running his first parkrun and he run an excellent time of 34:45

I know you enjoyed it and I hope you have the pleasure of running many more parkruns in the future, young sir!!

Course

This course starts off by the bandstand, then after a short stretch of grass you run two clockwise laps of the perimeter of the park, at the end of the second lap run back to the way you came from to the finish funnel!

The course is relatively flat and surface is about 60% grass 40 tarmac paths!

 

Points to note

• After a prolonged period of wet weather I have been told the some grass sections can get quite muddy in places!
• On the start of each lap the short tarmac footpath there are a number of bollards that you need to be wary of running into, in the running briefing you are asked to shout out a warning to fellow runners for them to avoid the change of any collision that otherwise could occur, which is good advice especially at the start of lap one!

So in dry conditions with a firm grass surface this is a very fast course with the slowest time today in a field of 309 runners was 45 minutes. My time was 35:04 happy with that at the moment!

Facilities

The closest car park to the start of this parkrun is Link Road Car Park Sat Nav CM23 2BA with parking tariff of £2.60 up to 3 hours. Unfortunately there are no public toilets inside this park, but they promote you using the nearby toilets located at the Jackson Square shopping centre.

Finally for the post run coffee they retired to the local Wetherspoons – The Port Jackson

Final Verdict

I would like to thank the run director Kevin Watson and his team of volunteers for making everyone feel extremely welcome, top stuff guy’s!!!

So finally it was great fun being a pirate for the morning and even though I was not by the sea, I could not think of a better place to be than Castle park with this lovely community on a runday morning 🙂

Best

Mark aka Silent Runner