Plan 1: Żary
As I mentioned in my previous post, the only letter of the parkrun alphabet that you can’t bag in the UK is Z. At the time of writing there is no parkrun beginning with X anywhere in the world.
Ever since I started my parkrun A-Z I’d had a vague notion of cycling to Poland. Initially I was going to go to Żary Parkrun. This was once a popular option for lots of Alphabeteers.
However, in May 2019, parkrun corrected the spelling of Żary in its records, to replacing the Z with a Ż and thus removing it from the Alphabeteer Challenge. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll add it to the collection as a bonus letter. But for now, it’s off the list.
Plan 2: Zielona Góra
My focus moved to the new nearest option – Zielona Góra parkrun, also in Poland. Before doing any detailed planning I estimated that it would probably take about two weeks. My original plan was to do it in spring 2020. However, due to the small matter of a global pandemic, this became impossible and I put the plan on hold until spring 2021. Which again, wasn’t to be.
In October 2021, I decided to start planning for spring 2022 a bit more seriously.
I’d got Ian on board to come with me, as long as we went outside cricket season and there wouldn’t be any camping involved. This meant it would be in April.
I did a bit of research and discovered that if we got the ferry from Hull to Rotterdam, the Eurovelo 2 Capitals Route would get us most of the way from Rotterdam to Zielona Góra. I’d never really heard of Eurovelo so I was very excited to discover this amazing network of routes!
As I always do in such situations, I bought the guide book and maps and set about creating a detailed itinerary. Fitting everything into two weeks of annual leave would be tricky and would mean some very long days in the saddle, but it would probably be do-able if we caught the train back.
Plan 3: Zuiderpark and Unisee
Then in early November I joined a parkrun discussion group on Facebook. There I discovered that 10 weeks previously, a new parkrun had started in the Netherlands. Zuiderpark parkrun is in The Hague…roughly 25 miles from the Rotterdam ferry port. My immediate reaction was intense disappointment. I’d got pretty carried away with the Poland plan and this had really thrown a spanner in the works.
I brooded for a few hours, and then set about considering alternative options. In the end I decided it was probably for the best. Whilst there was nothing actually stopping us sticking to the original plan, in truth I was a bit worried about the distance – if we struggled and had to slow down, we might not make it for the all-important Saturday morning. We’d also have to travel back on the trains over Easter weekend which might not have been straightforward.
So, in the end I came up with a new plan. We’ll get the ferry to Rotterdam, do the Zuiderpark parkrun at the beginning of the trip, and then cycle along the coast of the Netherlands and into Germany along the Eurovelo 12 North Sea Route. We’ll then drop down to Bremen to do Unisee parkrun a week later. This will also tick off “U”, saving me a trip to Slough! We’ll then have a week to cycle back from Bremen to Rotterdam, using the Eurovelo 3 Pilgrims Route as far as Münster, and then the aforementioned Eurovelo 2 Capitals Route, utilising some of the route I’d planned before, but in reverse.
Ian damaged his Achilles tendon in late 2021, and it’s been taking longer to recover than we’d hoped. He’s currently undergoing physiotherapy, which is helping, but in February we decided that it would be best to reschedule our departure and do the trip in early June, rather than April…even though this will mean missing a couple of cricket matches.
Initially I was a bit frustrated about moving things back again, but I soon got over it. It turns out it was pretty fortuitous, as last week I saw this pop up on Facebook…
The trip is therefore still a few months away, so I have everything crossed that nothing throws anymore curveballs into the planning process between now and then!