parkrun – 11/07/2026

17 July 2026 - By Steven Alder

This week, Witham RC members were attending parkruns at Hockley Woods, Bushy, Leybourne Lakes, Somerdale Pavilion, Whitstable, Maldon Prom, Thorney Bay Beach, ARU Writtle, West Stow Country, Lowestoft, Jubilee (Bedford), Mersea Island, Markshall and Thurrock (Orsett Heath).

Dawn Shilling was celebrating her 250th parkrun milestone at Whitstable in a time of 32:25. Well done Dawn! She even had a few supporters from the club joining her: Shane Ketteridge (30:31), Lisa Leader (32:45 & course PB) and James Montgomery (34:24). Meanwhile, Mark Austin completed the Bushy pilgrimage by visiting Bushy Park, the home of the very first parkrun, finishing in 26:22

A few ‘single’ visits this week: Giles Sowerby (18:50) at Lowestoft, Lee Tooey (22:07) at Thurrock (Orsett Heath), Leo Cole (22:10) at Hockley Woods, Karen Pickering (24:27) at Jubilee (Bedford), Geoffrey Reddin (26:04) at ARU Writtle, Steven Alder (29:07) at West Stow Country, Adam Hocken (29:10) at Somerdale Pavilion (otherwise known as the Curly Wurly due to the course route) and Sue Shippey (30:18) at Mersea Island.

Over at Maldon Prom this week: Banksy (19:11 and 1st VM50-54), Jamie Marlow (19:50), Steve Hookings (24:13), Adam Regan (24:25), Andrew Lager (24:39), Ian Cuthbert (24:58), Nicholas Grainger (25:49), Ian Lucas (26:08), Christine Wager (30:49), Ross Silverton (31:44), Elizabeth Atkinson (41:12) and Joe McEwan (50:45). Anita Grainger was this week’s Barcode Scanner.

Over at Canvey Island, this week was Witham RC’s highest attendance at Thorney Bay Beach, seeing Simon Handley (19:25), Trevor Johnson (22:54), Nicola Digby (33:29 Birthday parkrun), Vicki Riley (33:30) and Ann Johnson (33:45). This was their first visit for all of them. Finally, at Leybourne Lakes was Chris Beazeley (26:21) and Nichola Beazeley (27:54) whilst at Markshall was Andrew Smith (32:38) and Angela Read (34:50) with Patrick Hinchliffe as a Marshal.

The full set of results can be found here. Don’t forget to add Witham RC to your parkrun profile.

---

Quirky parkrun

The longest parkrun name is 50 characters long: Millennium Country parkrun, Forest of Marston Vale.

The shortest named are parkrun Ełk located in Poland and Ayr parkrun in Scotland.

Curly Wurly parkrun – officially Somerdale Pavilion parkrun – was completed this week by Adam. It gets its affectionate name of Curly Wurly because of its distinctive spiral section. Thames Path parkrun in London has since introduced a similar feature, but Somerdale remains the original.