This week my volunteer tourism journey took me to Leavesden Juniors Abbotts Langley, Hertfordshire that park has a very interesting story to tell and I met up with a top parkrun tourist friend on their milestone celebration!

History – Leavesden Country Park

This Junior parkrun is based at lovely 27 hectares green flag park of Leavesden Country Park that used to be the grounds of Leavesden Asylum between 1870-1932 and then after to its close in 1997 became Leavesden Mental Hospital.

At its height the asylum had in the census of 1881 a population of 2085 people consisting of 1638 patients and 447 staff that dwarfed the local population of the parish of Abbotts Langley.

Milestone Celebration

The reason behind this visit was my lovely parkrun tourist friend Wai Meng Au-Yeong kindly invited me to attend Leavesden Juniors. So I decided to volunteer on a day she was scheduled to be the run director on duty as a marshall and to my shear joy when I found out it was her 100th separate days of volunteering at this event and had delicious cake to celebrate this brilliant milestone!

I greatly look forward to our next encounter Wai Meng on our parkrun tourist journeys and for the record Leavesden as you probably already know are very luck to have her as a member of your core team!

Course

The course starts in the middle of the parks main field and goes in an anti-clockwise direction around the parameter, then soon as they reach the trees they turn right onto a woodland tarmac path.

Once they run a short distance along this path, they complete two anti-clockwise laps of a football pitch field. Finally they run back the way they come from and this time run a clockwise lap of the main field to the finish funnel.

The course is flat in nature and is almost run entirely on grass apart from the small tarmac woodland path section. Finally I was pleasantly surprised with the amount of rain we have had recently how well the course held up!

Love the high five foam hand that was given for me too use at my marshal station. We are going to have to get a few these for our Wardown Juniors back in Luton I think 🙂

Facilities

There is free parking at Leavesden Country Park closest sat nav WD5 0NX and toilets are available onsite. For the post run coffee they retire to the parks cafe The Woodlands Cafe that opens their doors at 9am on weekends!

Other Facilities include

• Walking/biking paths
• Football pitch
• Wildlife areas
• Tennis courts
• Children’s play area
• Outdoor gym for adults

Final Verdict

I would like to thank Wai Meng and everyone at Leavesden Juniors for the warmest of welcomes on my visit, greatly appreciated and you are all a real credit to our junior parkrun community!

So finally if you are looking for some inspiration for junior parkrun tourism for your children then I can highly recommend this event to pay a visit!

Best

Mark aka Silent Runner