South Leeds Lakers on tour

On Saturday 19 March 2016 Dalby Forest held their first ever parkrun and we were there!

I dragged myself out of bed at and collected my partners in crime to make the 1hr 15min drive along the A64 to Dalby. It has been suggested that driving for almost 3 hours to run for just over 30 minutes is one of the craziest things that I have ever done.

So, we arrived ridiculously early due to my fear of getting lost and had to hang around for 50 minutes. There were very few people around and we did start to get a little worried. Our worries were totally unfounded, there were 276 runners in total.

Whilst standing around the start line we chatted to a good variety of people and yes, they were as nice as the people at Cross Flatts Park. One was so nice that he returned my neck buffs to Cross Flatts for me, I didn’t even realise that I had lost them.

We had the usual welcome speeches and soon we were off. Ian and Sheree very kindly ran at my pace and Paul whizzed off not to be seen again for around half an hour. The course was quite flat with just a couple of slight hills, nothing really, compared to Cross Flatts. The paths were mostly gravel with the odd bit of forest track. The course was a single lap course which none of us had done before.

Dalby Forest itself is a beautiful area and the scenery was very distracting, I even liked the little wooden bridges. Sheree was particularly pleased to see the Gruffalo’s child and had to stop for a selfie with it, shortly after I had stopped to take a picture of the cabin I spent a few nights in.

We headed over to the visitor’s centre for a coffee and after much debate due to the length of the queue, decided to refuel with Full Breakfasts. They were pretty good breakfast at a reasonable price. The service was good too.

It was a great morning and I am going to continue to be a parkrun tourist when I can, but my heart will always be in Cross Flatts.

This post was written by Amanda Binns using our Create an article for South Leeds Life page.