When I heard that Rach and Mark were setting up Newbury parkrun I immediately offered to go along and take photos, because I had the feeling that the inaugural event would be something special. I expected to see lots of old friends, and that certainly happened . . but I don't think I expected there to be 317 runners taking part . . easily a record for a first-time parkrun . . and almost 50% of them (146 to be exact) had never run a parkrun before . .

Here's a link to a short video taken shortly after the start of the run of everyone running by as I took their photos . .

Anyway, here we are at the car park . . and strolling over the Common to the gazebo that was the focal point for the run . .

It was, as you can probably see, quite a coll morning, so there was much warming up being done beforehand . . and soon after 9am Rachael lined everyone up, spoke a few words to welcome, inform and encourage everyone, and set them off on their way behind lead cyclist Ian . .

It didn't take long for everyone to pass me by, go around the corner and set off on their loop of the old airfield and indeed, it was only a matter of minutes before David Fry came steaming past to win in an astonishing time in the conditions of 16.59 . . and then it seemed that there was an endless stream of runners coming along the old runaway . . grimacing, panting, smiling and waving . . all determined to get to that finish line (and out of the cold) as quickly as possible . .

For many of us, getting out of the cold as quickly as possible meant driving down to Coffee Exchange, where these three heroes worked as hard as they could to see that we got our coffees and sandwiches . .

and where Event Director Rach could finally relax, having masterminded an extremely successful inaugural Newbury parkrun . .

For many of us, for a long time the name Greenham Common was synonymous with peace protesters. I remember one weekend in the summer of 1981, travelling on a bus between Bath and Bristol, and seeing a group of people marching along the A4 towards Bath. Later that day I learnt that they were on their way from Cardiff to somewhere in Berkshire called Greenham Common, and that they were protesting about the siting of short-range nuclear missiles in Britain . .

I don't suppose anybody who saw them that day ever dreamt that what they started would remain at Greenham until September 2000, when the airbase finally closed down and the land was returned to the people of Newbury. It's partly thanks to those ladies that we can even contemplate running around what was once the home of nuclear bombs and Cruise missiles . .

parkrun . . a 21st century peace movement . .

I hope some of the Greenham Common ladies are parkrunners . .