Hyndburn parkrun - event 323

On the 2nd August 2025 I ran the Hyndburn parkrun which was the 323rd event held at the venue, my 247th parkrun and 165th different course I'd attended.

92 days after Gillingham took on Port Vale to bring the curtain down on the 2024/2025 football season, they took the field again to take on Accrington Stanley in the curtain raiser for the new campaign

It meant that 92 days had also passed since my last football/parkrun double when I visited Isabel Trail parkrun along with Hayden and his mate Henry.

Combining football away days with parkrun tourism has opened up areas of the country that I wouldn't ordinarily be able to visit direct from home. It also extends the football day significantly as we are no longer travelling up and back on the same day and so getting a chance to see the local area more widely than just simply the town and it's football stadium.

I'd saved up some extra hours to give me and Hayden the ability to travel up earlier on the Friday afternoon. Rather than heading up north at 5.30 on Friday afternoon I was hoping the 3:15 finish would provide us with a head start on the rush hour traffic but carnage and congestion both at the Dartford Crossing and start of the M1 meant it was two hours before we had even reached Luton.

Fortunately the rest of the drive was smoother sailing and despite the earlier start we didn't arrive in Blackburn at our Premier Inn until 9:30 in the evening.

Choosing a parkrun in that area of the country was quite a challenge as there are a few venues which I'd love to visit for one reason or another. But the opportunity to tick off both Accrington Stanley and it's closest parkrun in the same weekend was too big an opportunity to miss.

Hyndburn parkrun is on the northern side of the M65 which splits Accrington into two. Looking at the events Facebook page they advise not to park directly at the venue as there is currently construction work taking place and access to parking can be a challenge. Instead we were directed to park at a local pub and walk to the courses, which all sounded quite straightforward.

But when you are with Hayden, straightforward becomes a little more challenging a little bit quickly. The road from the pub to the venue was uphill and a ten minute walk. Hayden was moaning about the parkrun he needed to do to get to the parkrun and generally just being his thrill a minute self.

Eventually, with some educated guesses along a few public footpaths we made our way the venue and saw straight away the impact that the construction work has had on the facilities. When complete the new leisure centre will be a vital local resource and the number of parking spaces increased. It wasn't any hardship on us, but I am guessing the locals have had to take some short term pain for some long term gain.

Next to the leisure centre is an athletic track and sports fields just beyond where a couple of rugby pitches are marked out. I had wrongly assumed that the course took in part of this space but it doesn't. Whilst people had gathered outside the building walls next to the athletic track, the start of the course was the other side of the building site and so we were lead around the perimeter path through the woods that surrounded space.

The course starts on the north eastern end of the complex and heads into the woods where it turns itself back in the opposite direction uphill to the highest part of the course. 

Essentially the full course takes place within the confines of the woodland and is a two lap route which includes a figure of eight sequence on its western side.

The woods runs around the sports complex in a 'U' shape and the course follows around the right side of the 'U', along the bottom, back up the left leg of the 'U' before coming back around again and retracing itself for a second time.

Majority of the course is on trail paths, which in the winter would offer quite a contrasting experience. Due to the seasonality, the conditions were dry and perfect so mud wasn't an issue. January would be a completely different event. On the eastern side of the 'U', the pathways are mostly tarmac and it's quite a nice stretch of wiggly paths that weave their way around through the trees and is where the figure of eight element comes into play.

It also makes the course really interactive as there are people running in all directions around a relative confined space, even those there is plenty of room.

Running with Hayden, we wasn't going to get a fast time. But he must be making progress as it was only his shoulders that hurt today, not the usual 15 body parts. He did actually run quite a bit more than I expected him to, but he did put in some extra efforts once he'd spotted the course photographer. As he was wearing his Gillingham shirt he even engaged in a element of showboating as he ran by being papped. Kissing the Gills badge on his new away shirt thinking he was going to be on the cover of a magazine. 

I finished in 98th place out of a field of 105 participants in a time of 48:50.

August's football fixtures haven't necessarily been kind on us Gills fans with long trips coming up against Tranmere and Oldham up next. Two more slogs up the M1 & M6 await. But so does two more opportunities to visit a far fling parkrun and enjoy two more places we'd never see if it wasn't for parkrun.