Thonock Lane Farm parkrun - event 104

On the 18th October 2025 I ran the Thonock Lane Farm parkrun which was the 104th event held at the venue, my 258th parkrun and 175th different course I'd attended.

This season's league two lineup once again consists of a large northern based majority. Not quite as strong as recent seasons but as an away supporter it has meant many miles travelling to north to watch the Gills. 

The fixture list is computed randomly, and in spitting out our away fixtures majority of the longer northern based trips are this side of Christmas. Which has meant achieving Hayden's goal of watching every League match this season has eaten out of his prospective Christmas budget!

As per my previous posts, my go to parkrun venue of choice on our away day travels is the closest one geographically from the stadium that we intend to visit. On this occasion that would have been Cleethorpes but they were running an event number which I've already ran and so therefore doesn't meet my rather arbitrary and rather ludicrous criteria.

Having a look around the wider area I got a little bit excited at the possibility of running a second Y towards my second alphabet at Yarborough Leisure Centre which is in Lincoln and not far from Grimsby. That event too was running at an event number I had already ran at, so was ruled out after a bit of deliberation with myself 

After some back and forth between.the 5k App and the Premier Inn website I narrowed it down to two events. Thonock Lane Farm and Ancholme.Valley Way. Both were running their 104th event, which I had not done before. I'd done both the same number of T's as I had I's so before tossing a coin as to which one I stopped by YouTube to do some further research.

Thonock Lane Farm pipped it for two reasons. One, the farm shop looked and sounded great - who doesn't love a farm shop? And secondly, they have Alpacas.

It was the three Alpacas that greeted us on our arrival at the venue. Although they were quite shy and reserved, opting to stay sat in the middle of their enclosure looking at us with inquisitive eyes instead of us at them. The nearby goats were much more engaging and some even posed for photographs!

Our Saturday morning football weekends are well choreographed by now. We get up, do parkrun and head back to our chosen Premier Inn to enjoy the breakfast. It's quite efficient for us as I only pay for myself as Hayden eats for free. So missing breakfast is never an option. 

Our accomodation was 25 minutes away from the parkrun venue and never in my mind had it occurred to me that we'd be late for.breakfast this time, but Hayden had other ideas.

The farm shop was based on the northern side of the farm grounds with a long thin field separating it from the start of the parkrun course. The separating field is used as the carpark and as we were ones of the first to arrive we were parked much closer to the start than we were to the farm shop.

The course itself was two laps of three adjoining fields which ran to the south of the property. Each lap was 2.5km and ran entirely on grass. Although flat and slightly damp underfoot it was hard and firm when we visited. I can imagine on other days of the year it would be quite the opposite, which was another reason for choosing the venue as on another occasion it might have been too muddy for us to attempt

Now I know that Hayden isn't a huge fan of running, but there are occasions when he has genuinely surprised me with he effort and wanting to participate and put a bit more effort in.

This time the opposite was true. The more we went around the slower he went. I started with a little jog and so by the first corner we'd already had a gap between us. I slowed down to a walk and called upon Hayden to catch me up.

For a whole lap and a half he ignored me, with a face like thunder and being proper grumpy. All I was asking of him was to run 20 meters to catch me up so we could walk around together.

Once he had finally caught me up we were on virtually the last stretch and I jogged my way back, turning over my shoulder as I crossed the line to see where he was. Nowhere, miles away back trundling along without a care in the world.

I finished in 100th position out of a field of 106 participants in a time of 56:10. Hayden's time of 57:13 was quite comfortably his second worst time ever and was only beaten when we volunteered to tailwalk and walked around with Stephanie earlier in the year!

As he took almost an hour to finish, and as we'd parked away from the farm shop I had a dilemma. Do we spend another 20 minutes on site walking too and from the farm shop, as well as queueing for delicious goodies and getting back for the last bits of breakfast or do we head straight back?

We headed straight back, so I have yet another reason to revisit. And seeing as Hayden enjoyed it so much I'm going to save it for a punishment as that would teach him quite nicely thank you very much!