If you have the 5k app (the purple one) then as well as keeping track of things like the alphabet challenge, you can also create your own challenges. A few members of my running club had started tracking the Bedfordshire parkruns, after completing all the parkruns in Herts, so I added it to my list of challenges. At that point I only had a couple left, Bedford and Great Denham, and visited Bedford last summer.
This April was finally the time for me to head there, as Dad fancied doing some tourism too. In fact my brother even joined us which was lovely, as he often plays football on Saturdays so then doesn’t do parkrun as much as he used to.
I was a little worried about the parking situation, as there is a car park right next to the start, but they ask parkrunners not to use it, as it is used for things like kids football matches, and instead they ask you to use a park and ride car park 1km away. We left a little later than I would have liked, but the traffic going up there was fine, and in fact the walk from the park and ride to the park didn’t take long at all (it was 0.6 miles according to Strava) so definitely a good option. We were a bit late for the first timers welcome, but at the main briefing they mentioned they are trying to get a junior parkrun agreed, but it wouldn’t be if the residents were upset with the parking arrangements, so it is important to adhere to their requests. (If you go to the parkrun page and look at the course map, you can expand the map and it opens google maps, you can then click on the green start pin and navigate towards it)
The course itself is two laps of the park, it’s very flat and all on paths. It was a beautiful day with blue skies, although there was quite a strong wind, which of course you never feel when it’s behind you, but as soon as you turn and run into it, it’s there!
Scenes of the route plus the pop up at the start.
I really enjoyed the route- the park was quite varied with grassland, a few wooded areas, some ponds, and at times you ran past a row of trees and could glimpse the river through them.
I ran with Dad and as usually chat and don’t look at watches while we run (he doesn’t have a GPS watch or anything, and I just press start and stop and that’s it) but he commented that we were going pretty quickly. I think he said more than me in the second lap. I don’t look at splits much but when cropping the route map it was pleasing to see a royal flush negative split (each mile quicker than the previous one), particularly as I felt I really slowed in the final section as we ran into the wind towards the finish line. My time was 28:23 so a fair bit quicker than I have been running recently.
The finish funnel bunting, obligatory token photo and purple pop up picture.
On that note, I loved their finish funnel! It reminded me of Clermont Waterfront, which has flags from around the world decorating their funnel. This one had bunting made from old high viz jackets- it looked so pretty fluttering in the wind.
Photos of my brother with me, and then Dad joined us. I was glad of my sunglasses as my eyes would not have been open for any of the pictures otherwise!
Time for some photos before we walked back to the car and drove home, as Mum was at home ready to cook us some breakfast.
New and old Vonoroi map! Before- that green triangle was Great Denham, and now it’s purple because I’ve been there.
The 5K app also had an update where you can now select Vonoroi when you look at the map of events. This was available if you use the google chrome extension- parkrun challenges- still the original way to track challenges. However even if you have chrome on your phone, it wouldn’t work, but now you can have the fun of looking at the map on your phone instead.
So, Stay in Beds complete, and here are the dates I visited first:
Bedford- 8th July 2023
Dunstable Downs- 2nd March 2019
Great Denham- 20th April 2024
Henlow Bridge Lakes- 27th November 2021
Luton Wardown- 4th September 2021
Houghton Hall- 27th January 2018
Millennium Country- 13th April 2019
Rushmere- 22nd September 2018
(Complete until of course another one starts in Beds…)
Have you been to any of all of these events? Are you as taken as I am with the Vonoroi map? Which challenges are you working on if any?
It’s a quick course! I walked it with an injured friend in the pouring rain a few years ago, so would love to run it when back to running myself to see what I can do.