Jersey Farm parkrun is in Jersey Farm Woodland Park which is in Sandridge just outside of St
Albans. It was previously farmland named by Dr Corner after his herd of Jersey cows. This parkrun is one of only three beginning with the letter 'J' in the UK so it attracts many tourists doing the alphabet challenge and for my wife, the outstanding letter for completing this.
Created by Clayton Industries, the 5k app has become a must-have application for parkrun tourists. Once you add your unique parkrun number it downloads all your parkrun data and lets you see your progression across a multitude of running/volunteering challenges and milestones, too many to list here. It adds a huge amount of fun, I highly recommend it; https://www.claytoninds.com/parkrun
I spoke to the Run Director, Carole Teacher, who I learned used to be a regular at my local parkrun Burgess park before she moved to this part of the world. Carole gave a shout-out to all the tourists, reminded us to give way to horses and set us off.
This course starts with a loop at the top of a hill and then joins the bridleway descending clockwise along the perimeter of the park which is done twice. Whilst it was cold and grey, it wasn’t raining much to my relief, this isn’t a course which would agree with me if wet. When I’d come previously in July 2019 it had been a pea-souper of a morning and a bit slippery underfoot. Today with clearer skies I could enjoy the surroundings with great views from 64m elevation.
Amongst the 217 runners were a group wearing cow cowl hats, cow cowl buffs. They had brought cow cowl decorated boxes of homemade cakes for everyone as they too were completing the alphabet challenge #celebrationtime
I've loved accompaniing Shveta all over the world as she has completed the Alphabet challenge, (we went to Poland to secure the elusive letter 'Z'), it's been so much fun. Next week we'll be back at our home parkrun Burgess parkrun for some volunterring, to see friends and swap parkrun tourism tales.
Holy cow! 😀