On a morning when the heavens opened up and sensible people were indoors, I realised that they were the ones missing out. I was running at a stunning location with very good tourist friends at Higginson park, Marlow, Buckinghamshire  🙂

So Higginson park is 32 acres in size and has been a public park since 1926, but its history goes far back as garden since 1758. In 2016 Higginson collected it’s 13th straight prestigious Green Flag award and it borders one side onto the famous river Thames!

Must admit one of favourite parkrun tourist pleasures is running on courses beside a river and the last time I ran this close to this great river was at Kingston parkrun that was part of my capital parkrun adventure. I felt privileged to make her acquaintance again!

Tourist Celebrations

The reason why I was here this week for their event 8 was to help celebrate two parkrun tourist stalwarts Andrew Chilcraft (left of picture) and Kevin Brown who were both running their respective 250th parkrun on Saturday, wow outstanding effort guys!!!

For the record Andrew is a event director at Linford Woods, Milton Keynes and Kevin Brown from Bedfont Lakes parkrun has been a very good friend of mine friend throughout my adventures!!!

On this celebration it was great to see so members of our tourist community again, share experiences and just be happy in each others company!!!!

Finally I need to say Kevin has been there for a number of my important parkrun milestones, but the one occasion that I will cherish forever is when he and a couple of close parkrun friends run with me at Homewood parkrun to support me after the loss of my beloved dad, you are a top man and I am lucky to know you mate!!!!

Course

The course is very simple in design, you run two anticlockwise laps of Higginson park, then run a very scenic 2 km out and back route alone the tow path beside the river Thames, finally finish where you started by the skate park!

The course as you would expect is very flat and for a majority of the route surface is made up of gravel paths.

Points to note

• No dogs permitted on this course
• Not suitable for buggies runners
• The temporary pontoon bridge needs to be crossed with caution in wet weather
• Be very wary of runners trying to overtake in both directions on this narrow footpath out and back section!
• Finally if you position yourself right at the start this differently is a PB still course!

My time 37:25

Facilities

There is pay & display parking at Higgington park with charges of just £1.20 up to 2 hours Sat Nav SL7 2AE and toilets where available inside the park before the start of the parkrun that is always a bonus!

For the post run coffee we retired to The Resolute cafe that is situated inside the park for a well-earned bacon roll 🙂

Other facilities included

• Skate park
• Leisure centre
• Children’s playground
• Museum
• Status of 5 x Olympic champion Sir Steve Redgrave

Final Verdict

I would like to thank all the Hi Vis heroes at Higginson who supported all the runners in the most horrendous of weather conditions, it is hard to believe you have only completed eight events, excellent stuff guy’s!!!!

So would I recommend Higginson, Marlow to you all and the answer would be a resounding yes, beautiful town and a fast scenic course along the river Thames. Heaven of a parkrun event!!!!

Best

Mark aka Silent Runner