Great to be touring again with this week visiting South Woodham Ferrers, Essex that is just 8 miles from Chelmsford with a current population of approx 16,453

History

In 1889 a train station was built on greenfield land to serve the village of Woodham Ferrers that laid just about 1 mile away. The station was the catalyst for the birth of the town of South Woodham Ferrers with estates being built up slowly around it.

The next big jump in the towns history was in 1972 when Essex County Council decided to turn South Woodham Ferrers into a new Riverside Country Town that included large housing development of the surrounding area into the town you see today!

New Friends

Always Good to meet new parkrun tourists to me in Sandra & Stephen Rhodes with mascot Dudley accompanying then from Wisbech, Norfolk.

A new one for me is Sandra is a keen photographer and takes pictures around the course she visits and shares them with the local parkrun community with this being her current this weeks excellent work link, lovely touch Sandra!

Who knows one day I may pop up for a visit to your local parkrun at Kings Lynn, until then it was all my pleasure to meet you guy’s 🙂

Course

This event because of the bad weather was run on their alternative single clockwise lap winter course along the seawall banks of river Crouch and surrounding marshland. The running surface is a mixture of grass and gravel paths with very little elevation to worry about!

Points to note

• Very exposed with no protection from the weather
• Small sharp inclines to get you between the different levels of this course
• Bring trail shoes as a option in wet weather

I loved this single lap course with the majestic beauty of a tidal river and surrounding marshland. To be fair their winter course held up well to the extremely wet weather of late and in the right conditions would be a very fast course to run!

My time was 38:47 and very happy where I am fitness wise at present!

Facilities

There is free parking available at Marsh Farm Animal Adventure Park sat nav CM3 5WP. Before the start there are 2 portable toilets available outside the adventure park main entrance gates to their left with the park itself not opening till 10am

For the record this car park is about a 5 min walk away from the start and even though there is parkrun signage directing you to the start it is easy to get confused!

There is a smaller satellite car park next to the start line that is an option if you wish to use it, with a map I created below showing it’s location from the main designated Marsh Farm Animal Adventure Park car park!

For the post run coffee we retired the lovely little mobile cafe Phoebes for our well earned cuppa and I even brought a bag of swan food for a £1 for our geese back home at Wardown Park to feed next week 🙂

If you have young children accompanying you to this event it will be well worth a visit to Marsh Farm Animal Adventure Park afterwards for a family treat!

Final Verdict

I would like to thank this weeks run director Helen, Hi-Vis volunteers and community for giving me and my tourist friends the warmest welcomes on our visit!

For me one of the most important ingredients of any parkrun event is it’s community and the biggest complement I can give South Woodham Ferrers is like I was running at my home parkrun at Luton, you are a top lovely community!

So if you want to run something different on a beautiful tidal river course, then South Woodham Ferrers has to be very high on your tourist list!

Best

Mark aka Silent Runner