At Wellingborough
Saturday was a southbound day. I was heading to Milton Keynes because, quite astonishingly, we’d finally managed to exchange contracts on the house sale. After months of frustration, it’s suddenly about to get very real. And so it remained for me to go back one last time to collect my lawnmower and strimmer. Glamorous, I know.
It also gave me a chance to see Maximus. Now that she’s an employed person, her time is harder to acquire, so grabbing a few hours with her required careful scheduling. But before all that, there was the small matter of a parkrun.
I’m still pushing for alphabet #2, and I’m down to Q, U, and O. Status QUO, as it were. Earlier in the year a new Q appeared in Wellingborough, which isn’t exactly miles out of my way, so that settled the question.
Parking, Toilets, and Cold Mornings
I left the house at 7am armed with coffee and Google Maps. Getting there was easy. Parking… less so.
Queensway doesn’t have its own car park, and the usual fallback — the local Medical Centre — was unavailable because they were running “stab a pensioner” day. Flu jabs everywhere, parkrunners nowhere. So I ended up on an uninspiring road on an industrial estate, which left me with a 700‑metre walk in the cold to reach the start. More importantly, to reach a toilet.
Once essential bodily functions were complete, I wandered over and stood in the sun with a few other early arrivals. It was a quiet day for them — only about 200 runners.
A Course of Many Parts
The course is difficult to describe without hand gestures. You do a u-shape over grass, then a U‑turn and a return u-shape on a tarmac section. After that there’s an out‑and‑back, then you repeat the tarmac loop, and finally shoot off into the grass again for the finish. Mixed terrain, mixed moods. It was OK, but I can imagine it becoming messy in winter and ankle‑threatening in a dry summer. Despite that, I ran fairly quickly. I was under 32 minutes for the first time since spring. A small victory. Queensway becomes my parkrun venue #81.
Milton Keynes and Moving On
Back in Milton Keynes, Ami was busily selling Lego, as she does. I wandered around the shops for a while, mentally preparing for the forthcoming task of furnishing a new home. Aren’t kitchen knives expensive? She finished at 2pm, at which point we grabbed far too many chips from Five Guys.
From there I didn’t linger. I picked up my lawnmower and strimmer, threw them in the car, and headed home. Another step closer to closing the chapter on the old house.
