Frodsham Town Councillor Andrew Dawson is Chair of Castle Park Trust, and in this capacity he writes:
Work on preparing our Castle Park Junior Parkrun continues apace. We are all looking forward to seeing our youngsters (age range 4-14 (and up to 364 days) enjoying a 2km run on a Sunday morning.
We have a team of around 20 volunteers so far – and we are looking for another 10-15 to join us so we can be sure that we can run the event each Sunday morning at 9am. It looks like we’ll need around 15 or 16 volunteers per event. So having a larger team will ensure that volunteers can pick and choose when they come and help.
This is a draft plan of the our 2 lap, 2km course. If you have any suggestions to improve it please let me know.
We’ll be having the benches and litter bins moved off the path in front of the house. Having discussed the best places for the benches with the Nordic walkers the six benches will be relocated as follows. One will be placed at the top of the hill, one part way down with one on either end of the path in front of the house. The other two will be moved into the formal gardens – one in shade and one in the sun. Our park keeper sees these changes as a great improvement too! I’ve had a special request to make sure that at least one of the benches is slightly higher to make it easier for taller people to sit – or more importantly get up. As someone who is 6’2″ I very much support this as bending my knees by more than 90 degrees can be more difficult than I’d like!
It is quite rare when you can get everyone agreeing on a change – but moving these benches appears to be very well supported.
The Parkrun will start at 9am each Sunday morning and is likely to be over by 9:30/9:45am. To keep the runners safe we are intending to keep the car park closed and the main vehicle gates onto the A56 closed until 10am in the morning.
For the residents living in the Old Fire Station opposite the Arts Centre we will maintain vehicle access for them (and emergency service vehicles) – but down a narrow marshalled coned-off lane segregating the vehicles from the runners. No other vehicles will be allowed in at the Fountain Lane entrance from 08:30am until when the event has finished – almost certainly no later than 9:30am.
For people who want to use the park between 9am and 9:30am on a Sunday morning we’ll be politely asking them to use the top field and the area of the park that runs from Synagogue Well to the bowling green. The children’s play area will be open as will Castle Park Arts Centre and its cafe – so there will be plenty of space and plenty of things for everyone to do whilst our youngster (and some of their adults) are enjoying their early morning run. The bowlers will be able to use their green too. All the adult play equipment will be accessible too.
We don’t have an official start date yet. We are going through DBS checks, training and sourcing key equipment. Also we’ve been advised to start the event slowly – making sure the team of volunteers know what they are doing before we invite everyone to come and join us.
Castle Park Trust and the Parkrun organisers will be writing separately to the people living around the park explaining the proposals, asking for comments and ideally encouraging them to volunteer help run the event too.
If you can help or if you have any comments to make please get in touch.
Andrew