Thornham Walks parkrun - event 58

On the 12th October 2024 I ran the Thornham Walks parkrun which was the 58th event held at the venue, my 206th parkrun and 127th different course I'd attended.

There are a grand total of 277 parkrun events across the South East, Greater London and Eastern regions of which majority are within a two hour commute of home. When people ask me how long I plan to tourist for or when do I think I'll stop I use this collection of events as my answer.

Which means inevitably that I'm going to have some early starts and/or overnight stays in order to get to some of the more distant events, particularly those in East Anglia and the northern coastline of Norfolk.

This weekend I was heading for Thornham Walks parkrun in order to tick off event 58, one of my remaining few event numbers that I hadn't ran yet to try and get my Wilson Index up into the 60's. Thornham Magna the town in which the event is held is the other side of Ipswich and so from home an hour and 44 minute drive away. A fair distance, but not quite the furthest distance I've potentially got ahead of me.

In fact, this was my second attempt to make the Thornham Walks event. The first being last autumn where Stephanie, Hayden and Phoebe and I stayed in a Premier Inn near Ipswich with a plan to drive up to the event in the morning but it was cancelled on Friday evening. We ended up going to Rendlesham Forest instead and enjoyed a beautiful parkrun and had a great morning out.

This week I was flying solo and doing the trip in one go. So up at 6:00am, out the house by 6;30 and arrived at the carpark at 8:12. Far too early, even by my standards! I always like to get to an event in good time just in case of traffic, getting lost or in some cases the sat nav taking me to the wrong place entirely (looking at you Hockey Woods!), but my timings were a bit too short for a change!

With plenty of time to kill, I had a little wander around to get my bearings and see what I could of the course.

Thornham Walks is located in the grounds of Thornham Estate which has been owned for over 250 years by the Henniker-Major family. The estate stretches over 2,000 acres and is made up of both woodland and arable farming land.

I really enjoy these rural events, similar to Epworth Equestrian a few weeks back, in the middle of nowhere, the air clean and smelling of nature. There is something very calming about running through the woods and this is where majority, if not all the Thornham Walks course took place.

Starting on a footpath a short walk from the carpark, the route runs north into the estate and around the walled gardens. The course then consists of three meandering laps around the woodland before, on the last lap you turn right and head back down the original path in which you came from and the finish is located exactly where the start line was.

I'd say that the course was roughly 70/30 woodland/tarmac paths and I was definitely wise to have work my trail shoes. The start and finish are all on tarmac paths, but majority of each of the three laps are on muddy paths through the woods, with a short stretch of tarmac paths in the middle of each lap.

I was expecting quite muddy stretches conditions after the recent rains we'd had, but conditions underfoot were pleasantly solid. There were one or two very small spots where things got slippery underfoot, but in the most part the course was firm and made for fairly pleasant running.

I finish in 34th place out of a field of 86 participants in a time of 30:00.

Last week I could have cried at my time, which came in at 1 second faster at the time I was hoping to achieve. I've been desperately trying to get the last number I needed to complete stopwatch bingo, which is running a time that ends in each of the 0-60 seconds. 

So when I was driving home and received a text message confirming my finish time I got rather excitable and carried away! There was a reason I'd got up at 6am and drove for nearly 2 hours into a place I'd never heard of and will likely never visit ever again. It was to achieve this very minor, arbitrary achievement that not very many people understand let alone care about!

But if have to keep justifying it don't I? As it wouldn't make any sense otherwise.