For one Garden City Runner, a parkrun at Panshanger just didn't cut it anymore - so he went off round the country.

 

Steve Grout has just completed a journey to 250 different parkrun locations, the last of them at the Thames Path Parkrun in Woolwich, which took him to 321 overall.

He said: "Over the last few months, my train and car journeys have been getting longer and longer to reach parkruns that I had not yet done.

"For me, a parkrun 40km away is very local.

"To sum up why I rather enjoy touristing, I spent the first 30 years of my life living in zone three in north London.

"Much of London was a mystery to me but ticking off all the parkruns within the M25 has meant I have now been and seen parts I'd never even heard of.

"Indeed, a new experience this week came via walking under the Thames via the Victorian Woolwich foot tunnel to get to the parkrun.

"If you broaden that out, then parkrun has taken me to experience places like Tewksbury, Lowestoft, Stoke, Coventry and Dallas Burston Polo Club, just east of Royal Leamington Spa."

His says his favourite completed parkrun completed was at Zuiderpark in the Netherlands and the hardest to get to on the British mainland was at Thurso, still a four-hour train ride once you’ve made it to Inverness.

Others from the club took on a parkrun this Saturday, 103 in fact.

GCRs' home run at Panshanger saw Thom Buzzard eighth overall and Rebecca Barden fourth female in 24:11.

Jim Forrester ran his 25th parkrun too.

Alex Faulkner was second female at Ambleside Parkrun in Vancouver while Caroline Hale was third at Stevenage.

Jamie Rose was first at South Oxhey and Jonathan Foan third at Dunstable Downs.

James Huish was also third overall, his race coming at Rickmansworth.