This event no longer takes place.

With the summer coming to an end I cannot think of a more stunning location to attend as a parkrun tourist than in Yeovil, Montacute, Somerset!

Montacute House

The event is based at the beautiful location of Montacute House in the small village of Montacute and is about 4 miles outside of Yeovil.

The house was completed in 1601 under the visionary ownership of Sir Edward Phelips and now is lovingly maintained by the National Trust that describes the house as, “Montacute is a masterpiece of Elizabethan Renaissance architecture and design. With its towering walls of glass, glow of ham stone and surrounding gardens, it is a place of beauty and wonder.”

If you get a chance please do explore the beautiful house and gardens, trust me you will be handsomely rewarded for the effort!

6th Anniversary

One joy of touring is by a complete twist of fate you end up at a events anniversary and in Yeovil’s case their sixth one with a fun nautical pirate theme 🙂

The reasoning behind the theme is run directors Martin play on the words Pirates in Men’s Pants 🙂 Top idea and as you can see a lot of the local patron’s joined in the fun including Emma, dad Chris and Beans the dog, pleasure to meet you all guy’s 🙂

Alphabet Challenge

One extra incentive to run Yeovil, Montacute is the tourist alphabet challenge of running parkrun events that start with the different letters of the alphabet with their only being two parkruns with the letter Y in the UK and they are Yeovil and York.

Great to see so many tourists there on Saturday including Stephan Wells, Rachel Katherine, Sofie Haidon, Juli Wood, Nick Baggott, Donna Maskell and last but definitely not least local tourist friend to me Mark Wilcox 🙂

Course

The course consists of two parts a inner anti-clockwise lap of 2km that starts and finishes outside the house, then a 3km anti-clockwise lap of the perimeter of the estates park. Finally you finish almost where you started and run down treelined avenue for about 100metres facing away from the house!

The course is almost entirely run on grass undulating paths all but a small broken tarmac path section running outwards on the inner lap section!

Points to Note

• After a period of wet weather I would recommend running in trail shoes
• There is a short steep rise about a quarter of a mile from the end of the course, what on Strava they lovingly call it Killer Hill
• Please remember in winter months Yeovil run away from Montacute House on their B course that is based in the town of Yeovil itself

Great time running around the course, chatting to the local park runners and taking in the views especially running towards Montacute House along the treelined avenue 🙂

My time was 42:21

Facilities

There is free parking at the House sat nav TA15 6XP and toilets are available before the event starts at about 8:30am when the National Trust opens the main doors into the park!

For me I turned running this event into a mini holiday as there was no way that I was going to drive a total combined distance of 302 miles and a parkrun in one day!  I stayed at the lovely Yeovil Court Hotel that is just about 4 miles drive from this event.

For the post run refreshments you have got to the houses cafe legendary cream tea, may not be good for the waistline but I truly don’t care 🙂

Final Verdict

I would love to thank from the bottom of my heart today’s run director Martin Chaffey and his team of volunteers for making it a special birthday event for all of us attending, top work guys!!!!!

So my fellow parkrun tourists Yeovil, Montacute is a stunning location to run and this has to be put high on your events to do list, you have all been told!!!!

Best

Mark aka Silent Runner