To think the National Trust should not let Park Run volunteers marshal the cars at a NT property

Well there's always two sides to every story isn't there. Not very often we get to read both.

@Passepartoute The OP is apparently a past Parkrunner, so it's reasonable to assume they'd know there is a Run Director on site to speak to at every Parkrun.

If that was how OP wanted to spend her morning she wouldn't have left her house, would she?

What a very odd thing to say. I love parkrun. It's done a lot for me and I give something back by volunteering every so often. I can reassure everyone that when I don the high viz there is no rush of blood to the head and I don't become power crazed! My role is to encourage parkrunners and watch out for any accidents or other problems.

The parkruns in our local parks are all there by permission of the council or they wouldn't be happening. It took a fair amount of negotiation and discussion before ours could start up, I believe, and the clincher was the evidence that it is a really good way to improve physical and mental fitness for people of all ages and from a wide range of backgrounds. No expensive equipment needed for participants, no charge to take part, just a group of volunteers and some basic equipment provided by parkrun HQ and stored in a shed at the edge of the park.

In my experience, quiet enjoyment is not really possible on Saturday mornings, in our park, anyway, as it's full of kids heading to football practice or the playground or just running around, dogwalkers (who tend to move in packs and are not quiet), and runners/cyclists/walkers not doing parkrun.

I think ParkRun's PR people are currently cringing in horror at the damage @Manners23 has managed to do with one single post.

Well, if anyone was in any doubt that Clumber Parkrun organisers feel that their group is far more important and worthy than anyone else who may be at Clumber, and they should all just get out of the way then I think that's cleared that up completely.

Particularly like the touch of berating OP for using the National Trust's own map.

A Man has arrived. A Very Important Parkrun Man. That's the OP telt!

@Manners23 oh dear I cant help thinking a quick post giving the OP your email address and asking her to email you so you can discuss would have been a better tactic on your part.

I would have been happy to talk to you yesterday if you wanted to raise it or you could, still can, contact me by email [email protected]

@Manners23, it's a bit ridiculous to say OP was supposed to divine that you might have been there and searched you out rather than getting on with the visit she went there for. It might have been helpful if you had gone out to talk to the visitors being held up. It seems to me pretty unacceptable that people were driven to turning around and leaving - that's a waste of their time and a loss of income and goodwill for the National Trust.

If the driver of a vehicle clips someone as they pass or someone stumbles into the path of the car or indeed a stone is thrown up from a tyre and hits someone then the driver would be liable.

The driver might be liable if they clipped someone. They wouldn't in the other two circumstances you describe.

Parkrun directors seem to think they're organising an Olympic marathon, not a jog round the rec.

@Manners23

I wasn’t sure whether anyone was being unreasonable until I read your response, but OMG the entitlement! You don’t have more of a right to space than anyone else.
ParkRun need to accommodate other park users. If that means telling people to run on the spot for a few minutes to force a break for traffic or other users so be it.

I’m not surprised to hear about the attitude of the volunteers, sadly. I know that the organisation say that they prioritise shared space, but that certainly didn’t seem to be the case with our local one. If you weren’t taking part, they wouldn’t let you walk on the public footpath, which was also the main pedestrian route to and from the station for a lot of people. They’d physically block your way. 5 - 10 minutes hold up when you need to catch a train isn’t great - I know a number of people complained, but I don’t think anything was ever done.

If the driver of a vehicle clips someone as they pass or someone stumbles into the path of the car or indeed a stone is thrown up from a tyre and hits someone then the driver would be liable

No, if I clip someone with my car, I may be liable.

But if someone stumbles into the path of my car travelling at reasonable speed, I am not.

Where are you getting these legal opinions from?

Incredible verbose patronising "I know best" self-important response.

At which point he told me if I didn’t like it I could leave!

The Marshall had absolutely no business saying that. It's not Park Run's land, and its primary purpose is for people to visit the National Trust properly. The NT needs to tell them that if they can't operate without inconveniencing their members and visitors, they will have to go elsewhere.

An ampersand is not appropriate in this context, but a full stop is.

'Been' & 'being' are two different words

Completely agree, I support these charity runs in theory but in practice they can be very obnoxious and entitled.

I was walking home along the South Bank last week (on a weekday, around 6pm) and there was some kind of large scale 10k charity run going on, hundreds and hundreds of people running along very narrow pavements and alleys barrelling into normal people just trying to get home.

I don't understand why these events aren't organised so as to avoid the public! If they're using an NT property, then they need to close it to paying public for the day. If they're using public streets, do it on a Sunday and close the roads so they're not running on busy pavements.

Why should she? Are the parkrunners really so selfish that they believe they can just block off public paths because there are a lot of them.

(The answer is "yes", in my experience)

Why? You don't get a free pass to be a cunt because you're not getting paid for it. You particularly have no right or authority over people who aren't part of your gang

Is the park really that small you couldn't have cycled elsewhere in the park?

Sad that there's so much negativity about Parkrun here I love it, in my experience the volunteers are amazing, and a central tenet is to give way to other park users. There will always be people who don't follow those rules, but I'm very proud to support the amazing contribution to the health of our communities that this charity represents.

Wow! It might be a reason not to call then cunts though 🙄

Because the National Trust don’t give 2p for the or members, or anyone else who might want to visit their houses or other properties in the way in which the donors intended and agreed.

Next year they will probably just shut the estate for the convenience of the runners ( who probably include some of the staff).