Parkrun Tourism Part 01 - 2017

I became a parkrun tourist by accident. I didn’t even know it was a thing. Now I know it is and I enjoy ticking off new locations but I’m not so obsessive that I would plan my holidays around it like some people (Tour operator lauches parkrun holidays). If we are going away somewhere for the weekend I will check to see if there is a parkrun nearby and, if there is, pack my running shoes. This year we visited 6 unique locations:

• Tooting Common
• Malahide
• Eglinton
• Penrith
• Bournemouth
• Linwood

Edit. 14/08/2019. Added [number of participants].

Tooting Common (home parkrun). 18/02/17, 29:32. [459]

It all started because some friends of ours did Couch to 5K (C25K) and then signed up for parkrun. I managed to do C25K in three days so I thought I’d give parkrun a try as well. I signed up, printed off my barcode and went along to my local parkrun at Tooting Common.

That was my first experience of running around a park with nearly 500 people! A three lap course and it is always hard as I start my third circuit to see the young lads peeling off to head for the finish funnel.

Tooting has lots of volunteers that are particularly friendly and encouraging. It is also a very courteous course where I have picked up the habit of saying "Thank you, Marshall" to the volunteers as I go round.

Malahide. 25/02/17, 27:41. [284]

As it happened the very next weekend Mary and I were going to Dublin for a Rugby Six Nations match. We stayed out at Malahide because central Dublin was booked solid and Malahide is an easy ride into town on the DART.

I emailed the Malahide course director to ask if my barcode would work in Ireland - that shows you how little I knew. After all it was only my second ever parkrun. He replied to say "yes it would work". Now in Ireland Parkrun starts at 9:30 instead of 9:00. I have always assumed that was to allow for excessive consumption of Guinness on a Friday night.

Anyway I turn up and there are a few hundred people there. I’m standing around and the Course Director does the usual introductions: thanking the volunteers, describing the course, and then asks “Is Mark from London here?” I sheepishly put up my hand and several hundred people burst into a huge round of applause. I wasn’t expecting that!

So off we go trotting round the course. Halfway round I’m struggling to breathe when a bloke pulled up alongside me and says “Are you that Mark from London, then? “Yes I am” I puffed. We then had a conversation about his brother doing parkrun in Ealing until I run out of ability to talk. It’s not like that in Tooting; very friendly the Irish.

Eglinton. 21/10/17. [137]

It was back to Tooting for a few months although my attendance was erratic due to various social events and trips to Italy. Mary and I came back from Italy to see Emeli Sande at the O2 and then to Scotland to visit her mum for her birthday. We checked the parkrun website and sure enough there was a parkrun not too far away in Eglinton Country Park. So I packed my running shoes and off we went.

This was quite a contrast to Tooting. Instead of 500+ runners there were only 137. The introductory spiel did not follow the standard script, much less structured. A good job I knew what to expect but it might have been hard for a first timer.

We went off round the course which was a lot harder than the very flat Tooting Common. It is more undulating and goes through some pretty woodland paths with tree roots and mud to dance over. It is also the most convoluted course of any I have run with multiple loops and crossover points. Thank goodness for the volunteers marshalling the route.

They did seem a friendly bunch, lots of people seemed know to each other including the Fit Ayrshire Dads. Like Penrith the following week a real community in contrast to the packed London events. 

Penrith. 28/10/17, 31:57. [182]

Our friends Kate and Nigel, those responsible for me signing up in the first place, had moved to Penrith. We went up to visit for the Winter Droving festival and of course to join them at their local parkrun. Another very flat course, two circuits of the playing fields.

A huge contrast to London parkruns. Everybody congregates in the clubhouse for tea and cake afterwards. A lot of the runners know each other so it’s a really friendly atmosphere. It’s possible that it happens at some London parkruns but with typically large numbers (500 to 1,000) it would be hard to get that many people into a café.

Then the rest of the day was fun and merriment.

Bournemouth. 09/12/17, 29:13. [311]

We bought tickets to see John Bishop at the BIC (Bournemouth International Conference) centre on the Friday night. We went down and stayed with my dad's cousin who lives there. After breakfast I went and did the Bournemouth parkrun. It was a bit nippy at -2°C but a nice flat course.

`
Now I’m up to five different locations and starting to see the fun in ticking off some more.

Linwood. 23/12/17, 29:43. [125]

Another Scottish Parkrun. This time visiting Mary‘s mum for Christmas we stayed one night with the sister-in-law who lives on the outskirts of Glasgow. There are a number of Glasgow parkruns but this was the closest.

Another small parkrun with only 125 people. Doing a parkrun in Scotland in December is a bit chilly it has to be said. After the run we didn’t hang around but shot home to get warmed up.

And that’s it for 2017. More to follow...

Benson Row - 04

Penrith, Cumbria. 11/21-July-2019

The builder said he wanted to take the carpenter around to have a look at the existing construction and how the new stairs could be build. They needed to expose some of the structure. Next thing we know the whole project is full steam ahead, with our approval!

The structural engineer that we engaged to specify the steel beams for the wall removal pointed out the bowing of the back, gable wall. Oh dear, not good! Blocking up the kitchen door and tying the infill to the back wall would strengthen and stabilise it, and prevent further movement. So we would then need to reopen a door opposite the stairs as in an earlier solution.

Removing the dining room wall. 
That low landing on the left in the picture below had been our original thought for the location for the loo but more headroom was required - which is what started this whole thing off.

Removing the dining room ceiling
Exposing wiring and plumbing in need of a tidy up.

Removing the middle bedroom niche and wall.
Formerly site of the original staircase for the middle house.

The flying freehold.
Next door's bathroom extends into our volume of space. This is a consequence of both properties once both being owned by the same person who then sold off our house. We are assuming that he needed a bathroom in number 5 to make it viable and could only do so by stealing some of our space. Our front bedroom extends over the passageway which next door own so we have a reciprocal flying freehold over their land.

Propping up the flying freehold. 
We will be in putting extra beams to support next door's incursion.

The stairs mostly gone. 
That last nubbin of stairs intrudes into the living room ceiling. To take it out would mean making good and redecorating the living room again. So we can live without doing that (at the moment, says Mary).

An artist's impression of the new stairs.
We were expecting something at little more architectural!

The new landing going in.

The top floor landing with valley removed.
This will mean no more hazardous trips to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

New bathroom.
Starting on the new stud walls where the loo and shower will be.

Wall to be removed.
Some investigation of the wall between the dining room and kitchen that is being taken down. The stones will be recycled and used to block up the current kitchen door.

The outside repainted.
Before:

After:

Mary's flying site visit, 20th-23rd July, was very successful in clarifying division of responsibilities between builder and kitchen designer plus making sure everyone understood what is desired.

To be continued...

The Who at Wembley Stadium

Wembley Stadium, London. Saturday 06-July-2019.

My sister-in-law won two tickets to see The Who, et al. in London. Since she lives in Glasgow she offered the tickets to Mary and I. Mary was also up in Scotland visiting their Mum so I was due to go on my own until a friend stepped in at the last minute to keep me company (thank you Anne).

We got there about the time the first act (The Conor Selby Band) was due to finish. The bag policy was strict on size but not on content however Anne hadn't spotted the no alcohol clause. The plastic bottle of wine was not allowed in so we sat on a bench just outside, like a couple of wino's, having a pre-gig swig of some very nice Malbec. Bottle emptied, we went inside.

I usually look for a review in the broadsheets to quote from but my friend Gordon described the event so well that I am quoting his review in its entirety with my photos interleaved:

[Quote]
"Well last nights Who gig at Wembley was overall a decent night out, but I have to say that it was quite a bizarre evening and it had a kinda weird and unusual feel about it.

The first act were The Conor Selby Band, an unknown entity but not bad at all. Old style blues rock in the mould of Free/ Bad Company etc. A decent start to proceedings.

Next up was Irish singer Imelda May, again unknown to many, and again a very decent set, so far, so good.

The Kaiser Chiefs did a high octane set and were ok, not of my generation, but elicited a few screams from younger females around me, something quite new to me, that doesn’t usually happen at gigs I go to. But it was ok.

Things for me, started to fall apart at Eddie Vedder, I love much of Pearl Jam’s stuff without knowing too much about the band themselves. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I found the set to be dreary and boring and not the powerhouse I hoped for. From where I sat, his set seemed to polarise the audience, as about half of them seemed as bored as me and yet as many people seemed to love it and gave him a great reception. The Marmite Of rock and roll, you either love him or hate him. He was not for me.

[Eddie Vedder joined by Simon Townshend.]

[Note. Big screen, actual people can be seen at bottom of photo.]

The Who’s set had a really strange atmosphere to it. It was in turn, stunning, self indulgent, overpowering and at times a bit bizarre. But the strange thing was the audience seemed totally disinterested and disconnected for much of the set. In my opinion the offbeat setlist seemed to lose the audience quite early on.

About half an hour into the show there seemed to be a sudden exodus of much of the audience, whether this was Kaiser Chiefs fans who had seen enough or general disapproval I’m not sure, in fact, at one point I thought there was a fire, so many people were leaving and it did nothing for the already emotionless atmosphere. It also made an already rather poor attendance look very sparse.

For the rest of the inconsistent set, there was a constant steady move to the exits so by 20 minutes from the end of the show, the place was looking rather bare, with what looked like many more empty seats than full ones. This was a kinda shame really because The Who finished with The Rock, Love Reign O’er Me and Baba O’Reilly, which after so much very average fare, was amazing. So a brilliant end to a less than brilliant evening.

I have never been in the midst of so many disinterested people, who paid a lot of money, carrying out so many very loud conversations, I have to wonder why they were there at all, it certainly wasn’t for the music. And by the end of the night, most of them weren’t there any more.

The Who are rock legends, but last night wasn’t legendary, far from it, for many reasons, some I can’t even put my finger on, because I’d never been to a gig with such unusual audience behaviour and reaction. Odd really. Here’s a video of Baba O’Reilly, one of the few shining diamonds on last nights beach of stones."

[Note. Photo, not Video.]

[End Quote]

We reckon the clash with Stevie Wonder and Lionel Ritchie, who sold out Hyde Park, may have something to do with the poor ticket numbers.

The Who were scheduled to play for two and a half hours so when they started with the overture from Tommy and then a couple of other Tommy tracks I wondered if they were going to play the whole album. But no, they veered off to other songs [Set list].

Stevie Chick of the Guardian gives it 4 stars: "The Who review: teenage zeal undimmed by passing of years. Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey deploy full orchestra to electrifying effect." Full review....

I will leave the last words to Pete Townshend's exit line, "Our glamour is gone, our youth is gone but the music still sounds fucking brilliant."

Benson Row - 03

Penrith, Cumbria. Saturday 29-June-2019.

The user requirements are simple:

1. Fit a downstairs loo. 
2. Level off the landing. 

Benson row is a three bedroomed house and has one bathroom upstairs. To have a downstairs toilet would avoid contention, enable Mary’s mum to visit, and make the property more lettable on Airbnb.

Currently to get from our bedroom to the bathroom means going along the landing which goes down five steps and up six steps. Not good in the middle of the night or not entirely sober. This curious arrangement is the result of the history of the building.

Originally Benson Row was three dwellings. Three one-up, one-down properties in a back-to-back-to-back arrangement at right angles to the rest of the terrace. Each with its own door and staircase. They shared a communal loo in the yard and shared a wash house with the rest of the terrace. At some point the rear two properties were knocked into one by opening up a doorway between the downstairs rooms and again between the upstairs rooms.

Then in 1975 the previous owner’s father converted the front property and the back two into one large house. They took out all three staircases and put in the current arrangement of one Y-shaped staircase (or T-shaped if you’re looking plan view) that goes up to halfway landing and then splits left and right to access the front and back halves of the property. The middle room upstairs was the bathroom. He later split the front bedroom 1 into a smaller bedroom and bathroom and turned the previous bathroom into bedroom.

There is not enough headroom under the halfway landing to fit in a downstairs toilet. The original idea was that we could kill two birds with one stone by rearranging the staircase to raise the headroom underneath enough to get a toilet in and level off the landing.

Working with a building surveyor we went through dozens of permutations of spiral, U-shaped and Z-shaped staircases. Ideally using the existing, or previous stairwells. We were trying to avoid breaking through the stone wall that divides the properties. We could not come up with a design that would conform to current regulations regarding treads, risers, angles and headroom.

When we relented on the idea of not breaking through the wall we finally thought we could create an arrangement that would work. Then we realised that would impede the headroom down into the cellar and that idea crashed at the last minute.

Other solutions meant stealing space from the dining room.

Following our first dinner party on the Saturday we realised that it would make the dining room too narrow to be practicable. So any arrangement that stole from the dining room was out. Back to the drawing board.

In discussions with our kitchen designer and building surveyor we hit on a compromise solution that would actually work. The kitchen is large enough that we could steal space from the back wall and fit a toilet where the back door is. To do that we would have to block up the kitchen door, replace it by window and reopen one of the doors that was blocked up in 1975. It would actually work. The compromise is that we give up on levelling the landing. And here is the plan.

We could fit in the washing machine as well making a mini-utility room.

The new kitchen design is not fundamentally different from the one we had already agreed.

Apart from moving the washing machine behind the false wall and putting the dishwasher in it's place, everything else is pretty much like-for-like with the first design.

We had a couple of builders round to quote for the door blocking up and reopening. The second one had a more radical suggestion: knock down the wall between the dining room in the kitchen by putting in a huge steel beam that would allow the dining room to expand backwards and compensate for the space stolen by the stairs in the previously abandoned plan.

Mary had always liked the idea of an open plan kitchen-diner. I have reluctantly agreed to this. It does however allow us to achieve both of the original objectives: a downstairs loo, a level landing and, with a fair wind, possibly even a downstairs shower which would be a bonus.

The builder is going in to start ripping out the stud walls to see exactly how the new staircase can be installed. We will be getting a structural engineer to do calculations on the size of beam required to hold up the upstairs when we take out that wall.

Watch this space...

Knepp Safari

West Sussex, UK. Wednesday/Friday 26/28-June-2019

We were already intending to be in the UK for the end of June and beginning of July which happened to include the weekend of Glastonbury festival. We pre-registered and then Mary forgot to go online when the tickets went on sale. By the time we realised they had sold out. Not to be put out we went glamping anyway.

We had read about Knepp through an article in the papers and were intrigued enough to pre-order Wilding: The return of nature to a British farm which turned out to be a fascinating read. Then our friends Grant and Helen went glamping there and highly recommended it. So Glastonbury Plan B was a couple of days walking in the West Sussex countryside.

Charlie Burrell inherited the Knepp Estate and was unable to make it commercially viable using intensive agricultural techniques. In the end he sold off the cattle and the equipment and let nature take its course. Assisted by gradually releasing various larger mammals: Longhorn cattle, Tamworth pigs and various species of deer. The end result is a huge explosion of the entire food chain from fungi, insects, butterflies, birds and small mammals. Many previously not seen species appeared or returned. Read more on their Rewilding site.

They make their money from, amongst other things, selling prime organic beef, hosting events and eco-tourism (glamping, camping and wildlife safaris). Unfortunately the butterfly safari was the only one scheduled during our stay and was booked out so we made our own entertainment by going on various walks using the map that Knepp provided. Our tip for anyone thinking of going would be: plan well ahead around the availability of safaris.

Entrance to the campsite made out of old antlers.

Main building incorporating farm shop, showers, and do-it-yourself porterage using wheel barrows to carry your luggage to the huts.

This was my first experience of glamping. The shepherd's hut that we booked turned out to be more like a cross between a shed and a tin hut. Bijoux and compact it certainly was. The bed extended the width of one end of the hut, at the other end space for a small stove and a couple of chairs.

The "bedroom".

The "living room".

Catering was in a communal glamping kitchen where our fellow glampers would meet whilst making their morning tea and coffee and having breakfast.

The recycling bins had rocks on them to keep out the overly bold squirrels.

There was a shower block if the weather was bad but we took advantage of the good weather to use the outdoor bath and showers. Open to the sky but the water was plenty hot enough.

The first day immediately we dumped our stuff we went for a walk and saw Longhorn cattle, one of the ponds, an eel trap, and a small herd of deer. Our route took us past the ruins of the old Knepp castle, the current castle, a well preserved windmill and down some lovely country lanes. There is the River Adur and a couple of large ponds to add to the variety of habitats.

An excellent supper and great service in the nearby Crown pub at Dial Post.

Longhorn Cattle.

Deer.

The ruins.

Close up of the ruins.

Hammer Pond.

Eel trap.

The next day we did a morning walk to a local pub for lunch. I got to see the third category of the large mammals, the pig!

We also saw bonkers amounts of butterflies: loads of Meadow Browns, some Red Admirals, Painted Ladies, Commas and Marbled Whites.

After lunch at the George and Dragon at Shipley it was a leisurely loop back for a bit of a siesta.

Mill pond.

Windmill.

Supper was estate-produced venison sausages and lovely, fresh veg from the Sussex Produce Company barbecued on a grill made out of an old Tractor wheel.

A great couple of days adventure. As they say in the reviews, "We will be back".

London Marathon 2019 - Epilogue

My experience of running a marathon seems to be very different to many others. A triumph of common sense over pride and ego is what finally got me over the finish line. That and Jeffing it.

If I had one piece of advice to give to others it would be: run your own race, at your own pace. Forget targets, forget PB’s, ignore what others are doing, ignore the pace runners. Run what works for you. It’s about the distance not the time.

This is my journey to the VLM 2019 finish line:

22 January 2016. Age 63.  Couch to 5K. Inspired by some friends doing Couch to 5K I went for my first run in about 30 years and managed 2 miles. Two days later I went for a 5K run. Well that was easy! “How hard can it be to run a marathon?” I asked. "Hundreds of thousands of people do it every year." “Try a half”, my wife advised.

9 October 2016. Age 64. Royal Parks Half Marathon. Based on my training runs I predicted a time of 2:14:50 (I plotted all my runs in Excel and drew a best fit line). I went with the 2:15 pace runner and trotted over the finish line at 2:14:52. Easy, peasy.

7 April 2017. Brighton Full Marathon. Based on my training runs I predicted a time of 4:40. Went with the 4:30 pace runner planning to ease off a little towards the end and hit my target time. It was the hottest ever Brighton marathon! They run out of water and I ran out of steam. Collapsed at 22 miles and, after a long rest, walked to the finish line in 5:45:39. Technically I finished but morally I was unhappy with it.

22 April 2018. Age 65. London Marathon. More training than last year. Eased back on the updated predicted time to 4:55 and went with the 5:00 pace runner. Guess what? Hottest London Marathon ever!! Plus the pace runner set off too fast and I didn’t have the nous to drop back and run my own pace. Result: I collapsed at 18 miles, threw up my isotonic gels and retired from the race - never even made it to the finish line.

28 April 2019. Age 66. London Marathon (again). This time I abandoned all targets and predictions. Decided to completely ignore the pace runners. Decided that it was not important to run continuously all the way. Decided to Jeff it. Walked for 45 seconds every kilometre, rinse and repeat 42 times. Kept up a steady pace and crossed the finish line on my third marathon attempt. The time was a passable 5:16:05. No hitting the wall, no collapsing, no aches and pains. Two weeks later I ran my second fastest ever Parkrun.

Many people say how much they enjoyed the day and how fantastic the crowds were. For me it was just a very tedious 26.2 mile slog and I suppose the crowds provided some distraction from the boredom and discomfort of working my way round. I am clearly a grumpy old man.

We all learn something from running a marathon. I have learnt that I have a level of self discipline and determination that I would not have believed. You really need that to do the training.

That’s me done with marathons. I just don’t see the attraction of running. It’s back down to parkrun on a Saturday for me. If I ever even think about doing another then I’ll take myself outside and slap myself round the head.

Captain Corelli's Mandolin at the Rose Theatre

Kingston. Tuesday 07-May-2019.

We squeezed in a trip to the theatre between trips to Penrith, Scotland and doing some decorating in one of our buy-to-let flats.

I was wondering how they would manage to cram an entire book into the timeframe of a play but they did a cracking job.

Arif Akbar writes in the Guardian: 4 * "Captain Corelli's Mandolin review – wartime weepy is shocking and wondrous"

"Director Melly Still manages to both stay faithful to the original and inject it with freshness, while Rona Munro’s adaptation distils key themes, especially the question of whether the “enemy-occupier” in a war is ever free to show love or compassion to the occupied."  Full Review...

Ann Treneman in The Times also gives it 4 * "The 2001 film adaptation of this novel may have been a turkey, yet this true-to-the-story stage adaptation is anything but"

"There are some nice touches. The idea that animals provide a way to the human heart is explored in a playful way: Luisa Guerreiro makes a really rather fantastic goat and Elizabeth Mary Williams will have endeared herself to pine martens everywhere. There is also an excellent performance from Joseph Long, as Pelagia’s father, the philosophical doctor. Bravo, too, to the sheer theatrical nature of it all, the attention to detail and the emphasis on surprise and spectacle, bound together by some moving musical moments. War is hell, of that we are sure, but there is a bit of heaven here too." Full review...

And I agree with The Times, Luisa Guerreiro as the goat was brilliant!