Having travelled to York on Thursday and Liverpool on Friday, long train rides were obviously the theme for this week. We travelled to London Bridge station, in the dark, then caught a train down to Hampden Park station and then walked to Sinewater park, home to Eastbourne parkrun.
It was a lovely train ride and we enjoyed the sun rising over Sussex countryside providing us with a spectacular view of the sunrise especially as its brightness reflected off the sea, as Gandolf said to Aragon, ‘...look to the east’ (LOTR The Two Towers). We would later see similar landscapes captured by leading artists at the Towner Gallery in Eastbourne.
This happened to be the Event Director, Mike Thompson’s, birthday and the event’s anniversary too and we witnessed much celebration from the 335 participants for them both and rightly so. Eastbourne was started on 28th January 2012 and since then 13,281 participants have completed the course and with 974 individuals volunteering. It was evident that people were really appreciative of the event's contribution to the area and it was a double for us too with the event providing an ‘E’ for Shveta’s Alphabet challenge and an ‘East’ for the Compass challenge; running a parkrun with each part of the compass in its name.
At the start, lots of stories were shared from the event’s annuals with much laughter in the air.
The course we did was an out-and-back again, entirely on tarmac. We went straight for about 1k before turning right, going under a bridge and then right again taking us up to the Shinewater lakes before coming back on ourselves. This park was created as part of the Golden Jubilee Way and wider development of Eastbourne in the mid-1990s. Formerly a marshy pasture, the lakes were previously floodwater storage now transformed and offering views to the South Downs.
In true celebratory mode, our finish and barcode scanning were accompanied by cake. Happy birthday Eastbourne parkrun, may you have many more.
Next week would be a return to our home run, Burgess, to scratch the volunteer itch and see ‘our Jess’.
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