The apology happened about 3km into our local parkrun. I hadn’t expected it, certainly hadn’t planned it. But, as crows wheeled overhead and a weak autumn sun fought its way through changing leaves, I felt the words I had been unable to find for months bubbling up inside: “Mummy, I’m sorry I haven’t been there for you this summer.”
I have little doubt this expression of regret, uttered quietly in a field in the centre of Cambridge, would have remained unsaid had we not been walking together that morning. From a young age, I’ve had my best conversations with my mum on walks. Perhaps it’s the freshness of the air, perhaps it’s that a conversation conducted side by side can be less intimidating and more fruitful than one conducted while awkwardly eyeballing each other. Whatever it is, on that day, on that walk, six months after she had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer and 10 days after being given the official all-clear, we talked as we hadn’t talked for months.
Parkrun – a free community 5km run that takes place every Saturday – has always had a distinctive appeal. But it’s the capacity to stimulate conversation that is, I suspect, the beauty of the event’s newest initiative: parkwalk. In the 19 years since it was set up in Bushy Park in Teddington, London, parkrun has boomed, spawning events at 800 locations in the UK – and across the world, from the US to South Africa to Australia. Recently the phenomenon has moved towards embracing walkers as well. In 2017 the “tail runner” volunteer role – who is there to bring up the rear, so nobody finishes last – was renamed the “tail walker”, a nod to the fact that more people than ever were walking. Then, in 2022, an additional “parkwalker” role was introduced to make the event, which already prides itself on inclusivity, even more catch-all. The parkwalker is less a marshal than a friendly face to provide encouragement. Since the last year, 36,000 people have volunteered as parkwalkers and there have been more than 1m parkwalks globally.
People walk for a multitude of reasons – injury, sickness, age, recovery – and, I discovered when I joined them with my mum, get more from the activity than a gently increased heart rate. Most weekends, communities of walkers gather at the tail end of the run to talk to each other about their weeks, sharing their trials and triumphs.
Krishnaa Mahbubani is one such walker. A former parkrunner and powerlifter – she competed in the Commonwealth Games in 2019 – Mahbubani, 43, started parkwalking after a serious knee injury sustained while she was coaching rugby during the Covid pandemic. “I used to turn up to parkrun on my crutches,” she says as we walk the Coldham’s Common course in Cambridge. Mahbubani initially returned as a tail walker but, by the time she had had surgery and recovered, parkwalk itself had been established. “It gave me structure and routine and, without realising it, a community of similar-minded folk who are working through a change.” Talking, as well as walking, is a big part of the walks for her. “I always come armed with my headphones,” she says. “I’ve never used them.”
Mary Twitchett, 63, helps to run a community-based initiative called 5k Your Way, which encourages people living with and beyond cancer – as well as their families, friends and those who work in cancer services – to participate in a local parkrun. She agrees with Mahbubani: “When you’re out in nature and when you’re walking, it’s the freedom of no barriers,” she explains at Coldham’s Common, where she and her team pitch up on the last Saturday of every month. “Last time we were here, one of my friends came. She’s going through chemotherapy and this lady just walked with her. She’d never met her. She was a lady who had lymphoid cancer and she hadn’t talked to anybody about it and was going through treatment all by herself. She just talked about it for the whole walk.” Twitchett, an elite athlete who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2018, a few weeks after running the Los Angeles marathon, knows very well the shadow a cancer diagnosis can cast. Three years after her original diagnosis, she had a recurrence. “I had to go through it all again,” she says. Two years on, she is well but the spectre never leaves. “Every day, we walk with it,” she says.
Walking her own race is Sarah Catchpole, 56, a former rower and marathon runner who had a stroke last year. “It affected my whole right side,” she says. “I was in hospital for a month.” Today, Catchpole is walking with a new foot brace and says one of her main physio goals is to join a parkrun. Every now and again she breaks into a jog for a few paces, each step a small but deliberate challenge. Naturally competitive, she hates being last, which is why a community of walkers makes all the difference. “I don’t like people waiting. But here, when there are lots of walkers, it’s nice because you are not the only one.” Later, I turn and see Catchpole and Mahbubani, who haven’t met before, walking – and talking – together.
Just ahead are Terry and Liz Smith, aged 79 and 72. The couple are from South Africa, where they regularly parkwalk, and visiting their daughter in Cambridge. “We’ve always walked – it keeps us healthy,” says Liz, as they stride off together at an impressive lick.
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It is little wonder that parkwalk, like parkrun, has gone global. Bristol-based Melanie Young, 50, who has hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a connective tissue disorder, has parkwalked at 33 events and tail walked at 32 more in multiple European countries as well as in Malaysia and Singapore. She has just returned from tail walking at the inaugural parkrun in Leeuwarden in the Netherlands. “I find it lowers some barriers,” she says. “You already have the common ground of parkrun, so an opener of: ‘Is this your home parkrun?’ or ‘Have you run or walked this parkrun before?’, while being closed questions, actually invite loads of information if the person wants to talk.”
The following weekend – at Wimpole Estate parkrun, south-west of Cambridge – I meet Amelia and Alistair Taylor, a father and daughter completing their first parkwalk. “I’ve never been good at running,” says Amelia, 16, who explains the option of walking has made the event more accessible to her. Alistair agrees, adding that busy lives mean it’s hard to find the time – or energy – to chat to each other properly. “To have a bit of time to be in each other’s company and talk is good.” When I catch up with them at the end – they sprint hand-in-hand across the finish line – they say they will be back next week.
Behind the Taylors, Alex Norton, 43 and her daughter Katie, 10, skip happily together in the sunshine, Belinda Carlisle’s Heaven Is a Place on Earth blasting out of an iPhone. They are Wimpole’s designated parkwalkers this weekend and are proudly wearing the blue bibs to prove it. Watching them sing, dance and natter their way round the 5km reminds me of walking with my mum growing up.
Her cancer diagnosis in February came as a shock. She had surgery in March and started chemotherapy in April. Friends and family rallied round, starting book clubs, sending gifts and thoughtful messages. But I carried on very much as normal: looking after my toddler, writing, teaching, popping in to see her as often as life allowed. I was just busy, I told myself, refusing to confront the fact that, busy or not, things were far from normal.
But, just as other walkers have found parkwalk an opportunity to open up in ways they haven’t done before, so do we. As we walk, I’m able to put my conflicting emotions into words and my mum has time and space to tell me properly about her experience. “Cancer can be very solitary. Lots of thoughts go through your head, especially in the darkness of the night. So being in the daylight and the normality of being with other people who have different situations – they haven’t all got the same health issues as you – is really nice,” she says.
We turn the final corner. My mum walked to keep fit all the way through chemotherapy. Marking her all-clear with our own walk, together, feels celebratory. She beams at me. “I feel free again.”
The sun breaks through the clouds as we finish and endorphins course through our veins, stimulated, I’m sure, by conversation as much as exercise. Before we cross the finish line, we make a pact: we will walk together once a month. We grab our finish tokens, hug each other and my toddler who runs, excitedly, to meet us in the finishing chute.
And so it was that two new parkwalkers – park talkers, in fact – were born.
