report by Dan Jones

April showers anyone? Well, there were plenty on offer at this month’s GWR tourism venue of Pomphrey Hill.

Apparently the full saying is ‘March winds and April showers bring forth May flowers’.  Based on the gales at Prom on Thursday and the downpour this morning, we should be in for a fantastically floral May! Anyone know of any parkruns in botanical gardens we could do next month?

Fifteen hardy GWR-ers braved the rain to run, jog and walk the three laps of the east Bristol course – a great turn out given the soggy conditions and the numerous races people are running this weekend.

According to parkrun, 62 GWR parkrunners (or at least, GWR runners who’ve registered their club membership with parkrun) have participated at Pomphrey Hill, amassing an impressive 647 runs, so it’s a familiar event to lots of us. We still had a couple of first timers in our group and a few of us (Will, Sarah & Dan) managed to splash round faster than we have before and achieve PBs.

Performance of the day must go to the marshal who was pumping out tunes just after the hill and accompanying them with dance moves that looked like they belonged on Strictly! Maybe Pomphrey Hill is trying to rival Berkeley Green for the ‘Disco parkrun’ title (see last month’s report). Having said that, all the marshals did an amazing job in terrible weather this morning, exactly the sort of people who make parkrun the fantastic event it is!

Once we’d cheered everyone home and had the obligatory photo (thanks to Olga whose Strava I copied it from), we headed into Staple Hill for a delicious brunch in the Forge & Fern.

Well done again to Marco for organising another fab tourism morning. They’re great ways to explore new parkruns and get to know other club members – even in the rain! Keep your eyes on the Facebook page for more information about next month’s (hopefully floral?!) venue.