Junior Parkrun Update

As we’re sure you’ll already know, we are seeking to bring a Junior Parkrun to Pinner Village Gardens. This is a weekly run for children aged between four to fourteen across a 2-kilometre route set out in the park. With thanks to those generous donations, the startup fund of £4,000 was raised to enable this to take place.

To reflect the imminent status of the start of the parkrun, we have added a specific page to our menu which can be seen here. This will be updated with the current status of the project, and right now we’re encouraging those who have not already done so, to sign up to take part at:

https://www.parkrun.org.uk/register/

Initially, we will run a small scale pilot event to test our equipment, course suitability and most importantly………. our preparation! If successful, we plan to go live the following week.

We’ll publicise the start date on social media and personal communications. We’ll also keep the Junior Parkrun details in our event calendar which can be found here.

We are currently creating a list of fantastic volunteers who are happy to help out on the occasional Sunday. Our parkrun needs 14 volunteers each week to enable it to operate. If you feel you could spare an hour of your time, please do contact either:

Glyn Watkins – glynwatkins11@gmail.com

Emma Rackham – emma.rackham@parkrun.com

We hope to see you at the Junior Parkruns once they begin!

Tackling Climate and Nature Emergencies

Banner for the event

All Friends and visitors are invited to join representatives of Harrow Council, Thames 21, Harrow Go Green and the Newton Farm School at a meeting over Zoom on Tuesday 16 November at 6:30 pm. The meeting will be to discuss how to go about tackling the climate and nature emergencies, but at a local level within Harrow. These issues will be on the minds of many in the community with the ongoing discussions at COP26 in Glasgow.

At FoPVG we take these issues very seriously and have worked for many years to balance the competing interests of nature projects in our park. We are very fortunate in FoPVG to have Simon Braidman on our Committee, who is also one of the co-founders of Harrow Nature Heroes is also the site manager and one of the wardens for Stanmore Common Local Nature Reserve. If you have any ideas on how best we can work to achieve the collective goals within the climate and nature work within our area, please do get in touch via our contact form here.

Visit by David Simmons MP to PVG

Five people standing in a row during David Simmons MP's visit to PVG.

Earlier today, volunteers from the Friends of Pinner Village Gardens welcomed David Simmons, the Member of Parliament (MP) for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner, to the park where he joined us for one of our working parties. Cllr Simmons has been the Conservative MP for the constituency since 2019.

During his visit, he was able to see the work recently completed on the new stone raised bed at the Rayners Lane entrance, which was designed to mirror the bed installed during the 1930s at the Whittington Way entrance and bring a sense of symmetry to the park.

He subsequently praised the beauty of the park on Twitter, where he posted a selfie with the mural near the Rayners Lane entrance. The Friends funded this mural during the pandemic, with members voting on the chosen design. We would like to thank David for his kind words about the park, and for taking the time to visit us earlier.

For further details on how to join our working parties, please see our volunteers page here.