After my weekend in Brighton, I was home for the following week, and had arranged to head up to Letchworth to parkwalk with Branka. It turned out that the High Sheriff was there too (after seeing her at St Albans a few weeks before)- she really is doing the rounds.
It was the most beautiful day, although it started off quite overcast and I only made the decision to wear my sunglasses at the last moment as I left the car.
After the briefing a lady sidled up to me and said rather apologetically that she might be walking too. We chatted for a bit and it turned out that she had not been to a parkrun since before the pandemic, so was feeling quite nervous. I reassured her that there was always a tail walker as well as the parkwalkers, and hopefully me telling her to take her time and just enjoy it made her feel a bit better. We didn’t see her as we walked but of course if we had have done then that would have been fine. I just hope she enjoyed it.
The Sheriff, scenes from the parkrun and my token
It is such a pretty route with views across the fields- it’s two laps which can feel harder if you are walking, but with the scenery and company it was enjoyable from start to finish. We had one incident with one of the front runners. We were walking on a narrower part of the course, and suddenly we heard this guy shouting “ladies, ladies”, he then basically ran into me and grabbed my shoulders, trying to get past, and then once he’d passed us shouted “I said ladies but none of you moved”- I was taken by surprise and couldn’t react quick enough to reply- had he said something helpful like “coming up on your left” then we would have moved over. We did try to be considerate, going single file through the field opening (but then why should a faster runner get priority over a walker? Maybe we were on for a walking pb?) and everyone else was very nice.
Standard purple sign photo (although we should have got one with the three of us) and a mid parkrun pic
The bottom photo above is one of my favourite parkrun photos- we were keeping over to the side as the runners finished their second lap, everyone looks so happy, the sunshine is filtering through the trees, it’s fab.
I absolutely love chatting about parkrun, and it was exciting to hear about Branka and Holly’s alphabet plans, how they try to wangle parkruns into other trips (eg wedding weekends) and chatting about places we have already visited because of parkrun. An hour well-spent for sure.
I’d given Branka some Brighton Rock Bird and Blend Tea (we’re now doing tea exchanges!) and I knew she had to head off pretty quickly as she was off to Oxford (handily with a B&B store there- more on that in another blog post) so I headed off to Vutie Beets for a solo parkfaff (a “me party” if you are a Muppet fan). I listened to With Me Now so it was very much parkrun-flavoured.
Pancakes, buns and my parkrun socks
Of course once I got home my parkrun socks had arrived – I feel like they purposely make sure their deliveries arrive on a Saturday so they are always too late to be worn to parkrun! Also with a random parkrun magazine that was about a year old.
Loving the sunshine at Panshanger park
We couldn’t go to a B&B store but we could go to Panshanger park and visit the Planted coffee van for an iced tea, which is the next best thing! It was a gorgeous day for a walk.
On Sunday our club had a run for the new and back to runners graduation, so we had a lovely run to the lakes (so many goslings!) and then breakfast after. I was very glad I’d put on suncream before I left in the morning. I always forget that in the summer although you have less layers to put on, getting ready still takes ages because of those sorts of things instead.
Another lovely parkrun visit- that was my 4th time at Letchworth, and my first this year which meant I visited another Herts parkrun for the Herts Vegan Runners most events table! I think I’m going to try and revisit a few of them this year as I really enjoyed the more local tourism for when I was chasing Queen of Herts. It’s just a shame there are not more Saturdays really!
Do you have local events that you like to revisit? I’m still working on my single-ton for Panshanger too.
I didn’t know that incident happened with that runner! I’m clearly very oblivious! Thanks for another lovely parkrun morning ☺️
I think we were having such a lovely time chatting!