Liz at Lancaster recently hosted a guest with a difference. She was a parkrunner all the way from the UK on a ‘parkrun tour’. She and 99 others (these other 99 stayed nearer Kempton Park), were part of Airey Airways’ tour of parkruns in Southern Africa. I write parkrun as one word with lower case deliberately as this is their logo.
The first parkrun dates back to 2004 when Paul Sinton-Hewit along with 12 runners and 5 volunteers got together in Teddington in the UK. This initiative has now grown to an astonishing 9 million registered parkrunners around the world (and counting). There are more than 2,300 parkrun events worldwide, of which 1,247 are in the UK. South Africa’s first parkrun was started by Bruce Fordyce in 2011 at our very own nearby Delta Park close to Liz at Lancaster.
Enter Andy Airey, an engineering sales and installations manager, who started Airey Airways, a parkrun (not for profit) travel agency. He organizes the logistics for local excursions and even overseas trips so parkrunners can travel together. He says “I organise these trips as a hobby and it’s great to see so many people pushing their boundaries with us; 65% are single travellers and many would never have made this trip alone”. And this is how Vanessa came all the way from the UK to take part in the Delta parkrun one late April morning a few weeks ago. The group had run the parkrun in Mbabane – Andy organized the transport via a chartered plane, a bus and a minibus, and while many of the other runners chose the Zuurfontein parkrun, several chose the Delta parkrun.
And it wasn’t all fun and touring for the visitors. The parkrunners were asked to bring along any preloved running gear for distribution at some parkruns.
South Africa looks forward to welcoming back more international parkrunners in the future.