Milton Country Park will no longer host Cambridge parkrun

The Cambridge parkrun, which has not taken place since March last year, will not return to Milton Country Park amid concerns over numbers, it has been announced.

It was hoped that the run, which had been held at the venue since January 2010, would return after stopping last year due to the pandemic.

But Sarah Harris, project manager at Cambridge Sport Lakes Trust, which manages Milton Country Park, said: “The parkrun was getting almost unmanageably large – before lockdown we were frequently having near 600 people and that’s a lot for the park to manage, on top of what has been an extremely busy time for us with an increased want and need for people to be meeting outdoors.

“The park has been extremely busy and we’ve been concerned that we can’t manage this number of people going forwards.” However, the Cambridge junior parkrun was held on Sunday (October 10).

Sarah continued: “That’s not to say that it [the Cambridge parkrun] will never come back, if we can solve some of the issues. If parkrun organisers were happy to cap numbers, we could say what was a manageable number on Saturday morning, or if we could put it at a different time – or if we could find a different route.”

She said work was ongoing to make the park larger amid development in the surrounding area, as it is already at capacity. “Cambridge North are talking about putting an underpass to link the new development to Milton Country Park and we’re already struggling to cope with the numbers coming at the moment,” she said.

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