Parkend 7 (Start Anywhere)

This course, although running through Parkend Walk and Parkhill Inclosure, starts and finishes in Ellwood, next to the Football Club. From there you'll do a loop over the Parkend-Bream road, past Whitemead Park and round below Bream, before heading back to Ellwood via Little Drybrook. As with most of our trail races, the objective is to visit the controls in the correct order, as fast as possible. The 7 mile trail is marked on your map, but you don't have to follow it; you are encouraged to use the map to find short cuts, either on paths or cross-country, and so get round quicker. These trails are designed to help improve your map reading and navigation skills. The marked trail, and the optional maprun facility to show you where you are on the map, are simply designed in part as safety nets, and in part as aids to confidence building in navigation.

Note that as a Start Anywhere course, you don't have to start at the designated start....you can start at any control, but must then visit the controls in order, taking in the designated start/finish en route as just another control, and finishing where you started.

There are 2 road crossings on this course. Visibility is fairly good at each crossing point, but traffic can be quite fas moving, so please take care crossing the road.

For more information on how trails work, visit the Other Formats page.

Parking is on the grassy area and small track just beyond the football pitch. The nearest postcode is GL16 7LZ

Start and Finish are close to the parking area, so be careful not to get a false start beep before you are ready to go. The start is on the path that continues straight on from the road where it turns sharp right in front of a house on the edge of the wood, and is just next to the hedge around the garden of the house on your right. The finish is in the same place. You can, however, start and finish at any other control if running with maprunF v 4.8.8. In this event you follow the control sequence as before, but the designated Start/Finish becomes just another control, and you finish at the control from which you started.

Please note that the start and finish on the printable map in the link below are slightly different from those described here, as the printed map was used for the the Beat the Trail event staged over this course. You can download and print this map to run with, but check your phone map for the actual start/Finish location.