Three Conwy's and a Henley

Wow that was fun!

After a brief hiatus due to a minor op for me, we resumed our Parkrunning journey. Three more goes at our local run at Conwy saw me bring my time down from a very cagey parkwalk of 48 minutes at the beginning of July to 34:17 and 27:20. Vicky ran with me for much of the parkwalk but I let her get on with it for the rest. We interspersed this with a trip to Henley on Thames - we had to be down south for various reasons and we found a lovely AirBnB place on Friday night near the town centre - our host was a dedicated runner himself but he was reluctant to participate in the local parkrun - not his cup of tea at the moment he said as he was partway through a long distance training programme.

Just made it.

So we tootled up to the venue on a fine warm Saturday morning to find a lovely rural course - plenty of up and down and running through woods - very enjoyable. Despite walking the uphills I managed to sneak under the 30 minute mark with 29:58 and Vicky finished in 35:45. The night before we'd by chance come across the Sam Brown Ukulele Orchestra playing live at the Lovibond Brewery Tap in Henley. Sam Brown is the daughter of singer Joe Brown (remember him and his Bruvvers?) and she was a very good singer performing live at the Albert Hall many times and going on a world tour with Pink Floyd - she was also lead singer with Jools Holland for a few years. All this came to a full stop ten years ago when she lost her voice!

On your marks - go!

Rather than sit around and feel sorry for herself she decided to found her ukulele orchestra - and

here they are - a bunch of people of all ages strumming to their heart's content. Not only that we were able to have a snifter of Lovibond Brewery Ale - Lovibond's was the name of an acquisitive brewer from London who bought the Henley brewery of Ive Brothers in 1961, closed the place down at some point and supplied beer from their brewery in Greenwich, operations ceased in 1959. (The Lovibond name is better known via the colour scale for beer devised by one of the relatives one the brewers.)