So, what was YOUR best bit then?

That’s the question we often ask each other post-parkrun. The answer invariably is: beating YOU to the finish line!

As to which member of Team Bishop earns the right to make that assertion the most frequently, is buried somewhere in the parkrun stats database. (Best not to go there, metaphorically or otherwise). A more considered review of our latest parkrun experience tends to ensue on the journey home.

Sometimes it might be the spectacular surroundings:
Tring (sadly no-more), Wendover Woods, Dunstable Downs, Whinlatter, Aviemore, Abingdon, Mura di Lucca, Fountains Abbey, Beacon Hill, Lyme Park, Westmill (featured above).

Other times it might be the quirkier nature of the course:
Somerdale Pavilion (with its curly whirly section of ever-decreasing circles), Severn Bridge (with its views out across the Bristol Channel on one side, and the M48 hard shoulder on the other!), or Crosby (the one with the Anthony Gormley statues sticking out from the sand including one posing as a marshal).

Then there are the wonderful mindfulness-invoking forest trails:
Tring, Wendover Woods and Whinlatter (each worthy of a second mention here); Coed Cefn-pwll-du, Mallards Pike, Salcey Forest, Dalby Forest, Rushmere.

Those have been the highlights of our parkrun tourism thus far (73 locations and still counting…).

Whatever the highlights that an individual event has had to offer, every parkrun we have attended has also had the air of being part of something friendly and inclusive, something worthwhile, something of community. At parkrun, we meet with people of different personalities, different outlooks on life, different abilities, each with their own motivation for being there on a Saturday morning. Being in a truly inclusive social environment, means that Being Different (however you may wish to define it) is not something to be self-conscious about, but rather something to celebrate; being part of a diverse group of people so that, together we are greater than the sum of our parts!

The poet, priest and lawyer John Donne wrote:
No man is an island, entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
Given his clerical background, perhaps his statement might have been inspired after reading this from the Bible:
And so the body is not made up of one part but of many. Now if the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. And if the ear should say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body. [The apostle Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth, Chapter 12 verses 14 to 20 – New Testament]

As each parkrun that we have visited has had its own unique charm, so too does every park-runner who rocks up on a Saturday morning and brings their own special-ness to that event. So if you have ever wondered what parkrun is like, or whether it is even something for you, just rock up at your nearest parkrun because, the thing that makes parkrun special is…YOU.