This parkrun tourist lark doesn’t half take you to some nice places. This weekend we headed north into the teeth of a yellow rain warning, destination Nairn Links as we close in on the tail end of our second loop of all the Scottish events.

The Friday night was spent in Inverness, but we were sensible in our sampling off the delights of the city and when we arrived at Nairn the next morning we were bright eyed and raring to get this one ticked off the list. The day had already got off to a brilliant (literally) start as nn the way we were treated to a stunning highland sunrise, the red skies were just gorgeous!!

Right, Nairn Links, let’s do this !

For all the warnings of rain, it turned out, the parkrun weather gods were smiling on us as we arrived at the large Links car park, It’s strange how often it rains all night but then dries up just in time for 9:30. The sky was blue (well, there were patches of blue for sure), the sea was flat (ish) and the amazing volunteers were their usual cheerful selves.

After the obligatory run briefing 105 of us set off for this pretty, and pretty flat, 3 lap course. It’s basically an oval, and you set of towards the harbour on the “low road” before turning at the cone and heading back along the “high road” towards the Cricket pavilion where you turn again and head back to the start.

Which is near the finish..

But unfortunately we’ll not be heading down the funnel for another two laps!

A special shout out here to the funnel volunteers and the RD who would shortly be welcoming the speedy folk as they finish, on the first lap they line the course and cheer everyone on. The support here was brilliant, maybe the Nairn Links Marshalls are just a genetically cheery bunch, or. Maybe they were just as releived as we were that the promised rain held off.

So half an hour(ish) later we were done and headed to the local coffee stop, who’d figured out that 100 folk arriving every Saturday made it worthwhile for them to open out of season.. thanks for that guys!

And thanks to the arm for putting this on, we’ll see you again when we’re on our third loop.

Which we’re definitely not doing.

Well, probably definitely.