Arriving early to Kingston parkrun on a very crisp and cold morning we were grateful the Hawker Centre YMCA was open with its great facilities. The pictures on the wall charted the history of the site which had previously been an aircraft factory producing the famous Hawker Hurricane fighter plane which played such an important part in winning the Battle of Britain in World War II.
Fortunately, the only battle we were in was the one to stay warm! The start is a short walk from the Hawker Centre to a grassy area for the run directors commencement talk.
Kingston parkrun has ‘pens’ for people to position themselves in according to expected finish times. We did a lap of this grassy area before joining the Thames towpath for an exceptionally scenic 2.5k stretch down towards Teddington Lock towards Ham before taking a left into another grassy area and looping back to the finish by the Hawker Centre. The sun had been streaming through the trees and bouncing off the water creating magical scenes. Following on from the previous two soggy/boggy parkruns (especially Stockley County parkrun which makes me shiver thinking about it) I relished the firm footing clocking my fastest run for the season a full 4mins quicker than when I’d previously attended back in 2019.
The YMCA has a cafe which seemed packed with participants from the 339-strong field. After grabbing a hot drink there, we decided to head into Richmond for a more substantial brunch affair at Bill’s 😀
Next week we will be going in search of the letter ‘E’ for the Alaphbet challenge and if we play our cards right ‘East’ for the Compass challenge.
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