Parkrun tourism: Harrogate parkrun
My husband and I, along with Hetty our cockapoo, recently did some parkrun tourism at Harrogate parkrun in North Yorkshire. We were in Harrogate for the weekend to celebrate our wedding anniversary.
Harrogate parkrun is our most northerly parkrun to date – apart from Amager Faellad parkrun in Copenhagen, of course.
It takes place on The Stray – a large, open park close to Harrogate town centre. The Stray crosses several roads, so it was useful for us to do a recce the evening before and find exactly where we were going.
The Harrogate parkrun website course page has minimal detail – just describing it as three and a bit laps, approximately half on grass and half on tarmac. It doesn’t even say if there are any toilets! We discovered a toilet block on The Stray, about a quarter of a mile from the start line, on our recce and I’m pleased to report that it was open for parkrun.
We walked to parkrun, which was about a mile from the town centre Travelodge where we staying (and had the worst night’s sleep, I might tell you about that separately!). There was plenty of on-road parking all around The Stray and it is also accessible on various bus routes.
The start is outside Wedderburn House on the section of The Stray bordered by the A661 (Wetherby Road), the A6040 (Knaresborough Road) and Oatlands Drive. We arrived at about 8:40 on the morning, but totally missed the first timers’ briefing. We were waiting by the start line, but I guess it took place by the finish line, which was a couple of hundred metres away.
The main run director’s briefing was delivered without any sort of public address system to 470 runners. My hearing isn’t the best, so I didn’t catch much of it all. But apparently it was quite funny. It was also very quick!
The start line is on a narrow tarmac path, but lots of runners started wide on the grass. I placed myself next to people who looked like they would be around my pace (I’m very good at recognising who is around my pace). I didn’t hear the 3, 2, 1, but we were off! Then I realised I was behind 25, 26 and 27 pacers. I hadn’t even realised there were pacers. That’s what happens when you can’t hear. And their pacer bibs were more subtle than they are at our home parkrun.
We ran to the end of the tarmac path, then turned left and onto the grass, running parallel with the road and past the toilets. The grass path then became a dry mud path with a lot of tree roots. I imagine it could get pretty muddy in the winter, but that wasn’t an issue during heatwave number three of summer 2026.
I overtook quite a lot of people and found my natural place in the pack, as I ran towards the end of the park. Then it was another left turn, still on a dried mud path with tree roots, running parallel with another road. Harrogate parkrun is the most regularly shaped parkrun I’ve ever run!
At the next left turn, we were back on the tarmac path and heading down to the start line. One lap down, two to go… As I ran down the tarmac path, I realised I didn’t know whether I was supposed to be overtaking on the right or the left (as it varies from parkrun to parkrun), but I gave people lots of space and didn’t seem to offend or upset anyone.
I kept a pretty consistent pace on my second and third laps, and the laps went by pretty quickly. As I passed the start line and headed down the final straight towards the finish line, I was lapping a lot of people.
The finish line is a left turn and a short sprint onto the grass. It was cloudy and had felt cool when we started out, but I was hot, tired and sweaty afterwards.
I finished in 23:30, with a respectable 73.12% age grading. I was 14th female and first In my age category.
Just after I’d finished, a younger woman came to speak to me. She said she’d seen me running fast (her word, not mine!) and had tried to keep up with me. Without knowing it, I’d helped her get her PB, which was lovely to hear.
My husband and Hetty finished just over two minutes after me. Running with Hetty is always challenging.
Thank you to all the volunteers at Harrogate parkrun.
Parkrun tourism is when you run at a parkrun other than your regular (‘home’) parkrun. Some people do it every week. Some people never do it. We mainly do it when we are on holiday or need to be somewhere other than our local park at 9am on a Saturday. But we also like to go somewhere different just for fun every now and then. Some people do challenges with their parkrun tourism, which are on the parkrun app. I’ve never bothered with these, but my friend Joy aka Pink Oddy is a fan.