Eileen Jones
The views expressed in this post are those of the contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of all members of the Gritstone co-operative.
In the summer of 2021, Gritstone author Eileen Jones sent a copy of her book How parkrun changed our lives off on a journey. She gave it to a couple of “parkrun tourists”, Linda and Peter Moehle, who were visiting her home parkrun at Fell Foot in the Lake District, and were heading to Bramhall, and then Plymouth parkruns, with the request that they should hand it on to another tourist. Let’s see how far it travels, she said at the time.
The book has now come back home, after being carried all the way around the UK, visiting 45 different parkruns, from Halifax, to south Wales, to the north of Scotland.
It was handed back to Eileen at Heaton parkrun in Manchester on the occasion of the launch of her second book, p is for parkrun: a journey from A to Z.
Heaton Park is where Eileen grew up, and where she ran the first of more than 330 parkruns in 2009. The book was annotated along the way with names and dates and locations, as requested, and came home in very good condition, no worse the wear for its travels. “It was just a fun game for the parkrun community to play,” Eileen explains. She had launched the book originally in March 2021 during lockdown, with a relay from Fell Foot to Bushy Park in London where parkrun had originated, to give a copy to the founder, Paul Sinton-Hewitt.
Over in New Zealand, Alison King had just published her book about parkrun and wanted to copy the relay idea, but the distances involved were too great. So she came up with the plan to send her book on a journey of its own. “I like quirky ideas, and borrowed this one from Alison,” says Eileen. She and Alison have become good friends online, and will meet in real life for the first time at the end of April at a parkrun near Bristol known as the Curly Wurly, when Alison is on a trip to the UK.
The book had spent some time in Scotland after being collected from Aviemore by Debbie Cope, whose home parkrun is at Bolberry Down in Devon. Debbie was touring Scotland in her campervan so it was some weeks before it arrived in Devon. There, that weekend, were Sue and Stu Martin from Lichfield, who had taken part in Eileen’s original relay, and had already planned to do Heaton parkrun on April 1 while visiting family in Manchester. They brought it along with them, and a couple of local superstars were asked to run the final hundred metres of the journey. They were 13 year old Finlay Carthy, who had just been named Heaton parkrunner of the month, and 82 year old Andrea Lennon who has done almost 300 parkruns, all but two of them at Heaton.
During the past 20 months, the book’s progress has been documented on a facebook page, Bookrun Relay, where runners have logged the details, with photos.
Meanwhile, the launch of p is for parkrun was brilliantly stage-managed by Duncan Shuttleworth, the Heaton parkrun event director, who welcomed 760 visitors to the “world’s biggest book launch”. One of them, Ali Coach-Carter, a parkrun tourist who always wears fancy dress, turned up dressed as the book.
“I love parkrun people,” says Eileen. “They are crazy, imaginative, eccentric, and all brought together by this very simple idea to get people to enjoy themselves, together, outdoors. The running is almost secondary. Their stories and many more are in both my books.”
Two other Gritstone authors, Chris Goddard and Andrew Bibby, also turned up to do the parkrun. “It was brilliant to have a Gritstone presence in such a lovely setting. This is a very special place for me,” said Eileen. The second book features all the 135 different parkruns that Eileen has done, with one main event being the chapter heading each time. So of course, there’s H is for Heaton Park, and F is for Fell Foot
Main Photo: The book comes home.
