Farm and pylons

Parkrun

This morning, I volunteered for the twenty-fifth time at parkrun. This is a big thing at parkrun, so I got a mention during the briefing, and I qualify for another snazzy t-shirt – purple this time. I made do today with a snazzy purple sash (see extra).

We had excitement this morning. We’ve had this lad run a couple of times before, but he’s never had his barcode. The rule is no barcode, no time. This morning, he had it with him; he breezed round the course, smashing our previous male record by 42 seconds.

Parkrun isn’t a race; it’s equally about all of the participants, whether they zoom or plod. One participant, new to ours, was wearing the stripes, so, naturally, I had to go and talk to him. He was a canny lad, and, after he’d finished it, he said he enjoyed it – very flat – and that he’d come back another time. (He lives in a neighbouring county). I hope he does.

Big hose

I’d taken Henry with me to parkrun so I could drive straight to Ely for his postponed (Covid-19) annual charity hose-down by firemen (see extra). Whether this is more for Henry’s benefit or mine, I’ll let you decide ;)

Adventure

Back at home, I got changed, and Mr Pandammonium and I headed out for the rail-replacement bus to Ely.

We had used the Trainline app to buy our train tickets because the ticket machines at the station are notoriously unreliable. However, we had to collect our tickets from the ticket machine, presumably because of the train–bus situation, therefore defeating the point of using the app. Right on form, the ticket machine we tried first refused to work, so we had to go to the other platform, where the machine did deign to work. The bus driver didn’t seem to give a monkey’s uncle whether anyone had a ticket or not.

From Ely, we walked down the mysterious east bank of the River Great Ouse to the Five Miles from Anywhere, where we had some scran.

When we were replete, we headed to Wicken (see extra), where we had refreshments at a pub that was hosting a wedding do in a marquee to the side.

From there, we set off towards Soham, where they’ve recently reopened the train station. The plan had been for refreshments at a Soham hostelry, but the train times made that awkward, so we went straight to the station and got the train back to Ely, and the rail-replacement bus home.

Excluding the journeys between the trains station and home, we walked for twelve and a half miles.

Watching

Mr Perkins doesn’t like it when we ‘abandon’ him. When we got back, he was sitting in his usual sentry-duty spot at the back of the car, waiting and watching.