Off on me travels, to see my beautiful daughter in her first professional tour as a dancer, and surprisingly I’d never been to Manchester before! She laughed out loud when I caught up with her and showed the scribbled spreadsheet where I’d matched up her tour dates with air plane prices, day of the week the show was, and whether there was a nearby parkrun. The show was in the Royal Northern College of Music, on a Saturday, I could fly to Mancs at a reasonable price, stay in a budget hotel on Curry Mile and be in walking distance of South Manchester parkrun, which takes place in Platt Fields park.
OK, so catching up over cocktails was done on the Friday, and after getting back to my hotel area I’d checked out where the park was, and managed to fall into a pub on the way home, which was having live music by Crazy Horse. I ended up chatting to a couple who insisted on buying me a whiskey, and I bought a CD off Crazy Horse. By this stage I’d decided that everyone in the city was slightly nuts, but in a rather endearing way.
However, my Saturday morning hangover was of epic proportions. No matter, Cracker and I made our way to the park, which was looking glorious in its autumn colours, and even saw some grey cousins en route.
Access:
It’s on Curry Mile, extremely well served by buses. I was especially impressed by the “magic bus” which took me to the city centre for £1, and was of course the Number 42. I don’t actually know if there is a car park nearby.
Crowd:
There are usually 300+ runners here, and I found them all very chatty and friendly.
It’s near University area, so its popular with students, but there was a huge age range and diverse bunch running. I got chatting to a guy who was taking his dog, Maddie, for her first parkrun.
I was also most impressed by a woman who had her barcode pinned into her hairdo – though as you can see I failed miserably to take a picture of this.
Course:
The course is dead flat – it does a few figure of 8-ish loops around the lovely lake and starts and finishes at a centre where there are loos. It really is a beautiful park.
Post run:
Having left Cracker at the volunteer’s table, I was soon christened “the squirrel lady”. Everyone was really welcoming, and I wish I’d had the foresight to stick a few quid in my back pocket to buy a coffee at the cute little stand which plys its trade right beside the scanning zone.
Strangely Appropriate Song on Shuffle:
I was escaping the city the next day, to meet an old school friend and explore the Treacle Market at Macclesfiled. It was a good day to do this, given the City/ United derby football match taking place, so “I Predict a Riot” by the almost local boys Kaiser Chiefs was rather apt.
Gear:
I’d travelled in my Asics trainers, which got quite a bit of wear over the damp weekend! In fact, all my gear was the same as last week, and the 50 T shirt is always a conversation starter. I was using my Garmin as my watch for the weekend, and it coped brilliantly with the clock change on the Saturday night.
Time:
Ooooh, least said about this the better! I did stop a few times to take photos, which didn’t help me get anywhere near 30 mins.
And another thing….
Ah, the dancing! I cannot begin to describe how proud I was to see Jemima dance, to watch other people read her biog in the programme, to have the couple I was chatting to before the show come up to me afterwards and tell me how amazing she was, or to see her take hands with Dame Evelyn Glennie for their bows on stage. Do please follow and like them on Twitter and facebook etc!
https://www.facebook.com/jossarnott.dance?fref=ts
https://twitter.com/jossarnottdance
List of all the parkruns I’ve completed.
Filed under: Dance, Parkrun, running | Tagged: joss arnott, manchester, parkrun | 2 Comments »
Dancing At Lunacy 
