Yesterday afternoon I was at Beacon Park in Lichfield, day 1 of my attempt to run to, around, or past, each of the cathedrals in Britain. Or some of them at least. As many as I can manage. Until I get fed up with it. This isn’t some long-distance challenge, running non-stop with nights in a campervan between marathon runs. No, just simple short runs in the vicinity of the cathedrals, Anglican and Catholic. Maybe I’ll find some Orthodox ones too. Why? I like cathedrals and I like running. I have just completed a PhD project and will shortly be doing my 5ooth parkrun, so I need some new pointless challenge to distract me from the drudgery and sadness of life. And this is it. I will run the runs as and when I can but only post them here once a week. I don’t want to overwhelm the few people who will end up reading this – mostly, I suspect, my family and friends. I won’t advertise it. I certainly won’t ‘monetise’ it, what a horrible word that is. I will just write it. Well, and do some running obviously.
I stood in the carpark of Beacon Park, Lichfield, on day 1 of this endeavour. Beacon Park is the venue for the local parkrun in Lichfield, which I did in 2020, just before the c0vid outbreak, though I don’t remember much about it. I think my friend Geoff was visiting that weekend and joined me there. Lichfield cathedral is right next to the park. There can’t be many parkrun courses quite so close to a cathedral. Which makes this an apt place to begin a campaign combining running with cathedrals, I suppose.
I started off by doing a lap of the parkrun course, which goes around the perimeter of the park and the back of a small golf course. I’ve done a lot of parkruns, at a lot of different locations, and this one is a classic of the town park variety. There is a cafe, a little lake. Oh, and a statue of Samuel Johnson, who was born in LIchfield.
After the circuit of the park, I crossed the road and ran past the cathedral, past two impressive watery features, I suppose you’d say a large pond and a small lake. But both called pools. The first is the smaller, Minster Pool which was originally created in the middle ages as some kind of carp pond for the bishop (reading between the lines). It got used during the civil wars during sieges of, surprisingly, the cathedral, which was used as a garrison. What were they thinking? Then in the nineteenth century it was relandscaped in imitation of the Serpentine in Hyde Park, London. Though the result isn’t particularly convincing. There are, though, excellent views of the cathedral from the Minster (why Minster?) pool, one of which forms today’s main photo.
The second, much larger, pond is called Stow Pool and this flat lozenge-shaped lakette was satisfying to run round. This was originally created in the medieval period as a mill pond for the bishop and apparently ‘provided him with an important income’. No wonder people grumbled about the clergy doing themselves rather too well in the medieval period. My PhD thesis touched on such matters, being concerned with John Wyclif and his followers who were apt to grumble about clerical wealth, so its interesting to see evidence on day 1 of my cathedrals project. Apparently Samuel Johnson used to enjoy a walk around the Stow Pool. He doesn’t look like a runner, really. And it supports a ‘large and healthy population of white-clawed crayfish’. Which is good to see.
I ran round the pond, dodging dogs and prams, and back to the carpark where I’d started. One cathedral down, then. I did Lichfield today en route to Worcestershire where I am on one of my regular weekend retreats at Glasshampton Monastery, in farmland near Droitwich. I always slip out of the monastery on Saturday mornings to do a local parkrun, and today I was able to combine a new parkrun with my second cathedral run, persuading myself to do it despite the persistent rain and a chilly morning. It doesn’t look good if you start a new challenge and then give up on day 2.
A bunch of cathedral runs 