2019 Firkin 5 Mile Run

2019 Firkin 5 Mile Run

Today, in my series entitled "where I was taking photos this time last year", I'm looking at the Firkin 5 Mile Run which takes place from Hook Norton, a village that is about 5M NE of Chipping Norton. It's about 24M from Oxford.

The organiser's website says "starting and ending at the Hook Norton Brewery, the Firkin 5 Fun Run will take you 5 miles through Hook Norton, up and over fields, beer stop at half way (water also available!), round the shire horses, avoiding the brewery goats and back for some food and a drink". Yes, as well as a medal and a goody bag, you get a free drink from the brewery in the grounds of the Hook Norton Brewery. An excellent way to end a race!

Last year's race took place on Sat May 18th and this year's race was to have taken place today (Sat May 23rd). It has been postponed to Sat Sep 19th. Visit this web page if you wish to enter.

By the way, you can click on any of the photos on this web page to see the photo in hi-res.

The route of the race

Before showing you photos of some runners who did well in last year's race, I'll first show a map of the race route and then some photos taken along the route.
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The above map is taken from the Facebook page for the 2019 Firkin 5. In the description that's given below, I'll refer to some of the marshall points that are shown on the map.

Photos of the race route

You can see the start and the first section of the course that's in Hook Norton in this video of the 2017 Firkin 5. This drone footage is 0m51s long - it was taken by Livingston Aerial Photography.

I'll now show some photos taken along the race route. There are a lot of photos of the race route in a post to Facebook that was made by the race organiser in May 2019. Below I'm using a few of these. I'm  also using photos from geograph and from Google Maps. The photos I'm using from geograph were taken by Michael Dibb, Philip Halling and Steve Daniels. They are released with this Creative Commons Licence. Bear in mind that the photos from geograph and Google were taken several years ago. You can click on any of these photos to see where it comes from. Thanks to the photographers for these photos.

The race starts here - the runners are under the tower of Hook Norton Brewery.

There's a short section along Brewery Lane which is shown in the above photo.

Brewery Lane is the road on the right-hand side of the above photo. It reaches this T-junction (at marshall point M1) and the race route turns right to go along the front of the Pear Tree Inn.

It then goes along the main street of Hook Norton - so that's Scotland Road and Netting Street (where this photo was taken) and then ...

... the High Street where the runners first pass St Peter's Church ...

... and then the Sun Inn.

At M5, the route turns right to go down Bell Street and then bears right to go up Bury Croft Road. The above photo shows the start of Bury Croft Road.

Bury Croft Road becomes Croft's Lane where the route leaves the houses behind.

At M9, Croft's Lane is the road that comes in from the right. The race route turns right to go along a small section of the Chipping Norton Road (back towards Hook Norton).

It's all been tarmac up to now. But at M10 that ends as the race route turns off Chipping Norton Road to use the bridleway that goes through the gate to Court Farm.

The bridleway goes from the right to the left hand side of this Google Map using the line of the hedge that is shown along the centre of the map. On the right-hand side of the map, it leaves Chipping Norton Road (at the letter C of that name on the map). It then goes West and as you can see it's fairly straight. There are two farms on the left-hand side of the map. The bottom one is Court Farm and the one above is Wychford Lodge Farm. The bridleway heads for Court Farm and it's about 1.5K from Chipping Norton Road to Court Farm. The first 0.4K is a bit of a climb as it goes from 165m to 200m. After that, the route undulates before slowly ascending to Court Farm which is at about 232m.





The above three photos show some of the terrain along the route from Chipping Norton Road to Court Farm.

Eventually Court Farm is reached (and this is just about the highest point of the course). Here there's a drinks station.

Just after Court Farm, at M16 the race route (which comes in from the right in this photo) turns right at the junction to go along the track.

After about 0.3K at Wychford Lodge Farm, the track ends and the race route goes right along the road that comes from the left from Great Rollright. So the next 1.5K is on tarmac. And it's all along the border between Oxfordshire and Warwickshire.

The race route passes this transmitter.

And reaches this crossroads (at M21). Note that there's the top of another transmitter lurking behind the trees ahead. The road to the left goes to Ascott and Whichford. (Why can't they be consistent about how to spell "Wychford"?) And the road to the right goes to Bloxham (which is near to Banbury). The race route goes straight on.

And that's down Traitor's Ford Lane which leads to Traitor's Ford that's about 2.5K along this road. Wikipedia says "Traitor's Ford is a ford on the River Stour. The ford can be seen in the film 'Three Men and a Little Lady'. Immediately to the north of the ford, Traitor's Ford Lane meets with Ditchedge Lane, a track that is believed to be an ancient trading route. One theory for the naming of the ford is that the name was originally Trader's Ford, named because of its location on this trading route. Another theory is that a traitor was hung here following the Civil War battle of Edgehill, when several local Parliamentarian sympathisers were executed by Royalists."

There are some nice views from Traitor's Ford Lane.

And it's a gentle descent down Traitor's Ford Lane as this photo shows.

The race route doesn't get as far as the ford! Because at this point (which is M23) it leaves Traitor Fords Lane and turns right to go along the bridleway that goes through the hedge gap. From the crossroads to here, Traitor's Ford Lane has decended from 239m to about 185m in about 0.8K. From here to the finish it's 99% off-road.

The bridleway moves from one field to the next.

And alongside this field.

At M24, the bridleway reaches the road shown in this photo and ...

... the race route very very briefly goes down the road (- it's the road to Bloxham) but at about the middle of this photo (at M25) it ...

... turns right off the road to take the footpath through the hedge gap ...

... back to Hook Norton which the sign says is 1M away.

First it's straight across this field.

Later there's a bit of track.

And a gate.

And then, if you look closely, you'll see the tower of Hook Norton Brewery - it's behind the trees that are at the end of the wooden fence. Yippee! we're nearly there.

There used to be a stile here which was annoying at this point of the race.

And the finish is close to where there's a big puddle in this photo! Time for a pint!

Photos of the Male runners who did well at the 2019 Firkin 5 Mile Run

Here are some photos of the male runners who finished in the top 3.

Chris McKeown (436, Spa_Striders) was 1st finishing in a time of 30:33.
Chris has won the race three times, i.e., in each year since it started in 2017. He's been getting faster each year:
2017-33:09, 2018-31:36 and 2019-30:33.

Oliver Flippance (990, Kenilworth_Runners) was 2nd finishing in a time of 32:02.

Damian Dear (965, Northbrook_AC) was 3rd finishing in a time of 32:22.

Photos of the Female runners who did well at the 2019 Firkin 5 Mile Run

Here are some photos of the female runners who finished in the top 3.

Jill Pittard (469, Northbrook_AC) was the 1st female finishing in a time of 37:37.

Rachel Piper (467, Cherwell_Runners_and_Joggers) was the 2nd female finishing in a time of 37:53.

Runner 967 was the 3rd female finishing in a time of 38:43.

Photos of runners from other running clubs

Here are some photos of runners from running clubs other than those mentioned above. I've tried to show the runner who was the club's highest placed runner but I may have got this wrong. I guess there may have been others from clubs who were not running in a club vest. These photos are ordered by the name of the running club.

Richard Chinn (942, Adderbury_Running_Club) finished in a time of 42:46.

Clare Burnby (930, Alchester_RC) finished in a time of 47:55.

Andrew West (873, Axe_Valley_Runners) finished in a time of 40:16.

Nick Harper (372, Bourton_Roadrunners) finished in a time of 45:30.

Graham Weir (871, Brackley_and_District_RC) finished in a time of 42:44.

Runner 451 from Buckingham_and_Stowe_RC finished in a time of 1:02:58.

Andy and Emma Johnson (403 and 404, Chesterton_Trail_Runners) finished in 54:25 and 54:21.

Debbie Tarbuck (849, Daventry_Road_Runners) finished in a time of 51:43.

Pete Rean (805, Droitwich_AC) finished in a time of 39:30.

Vince Blake (918, Hook_Norton_Harriers) finished in a time of 41:41.

Hayley Roche (818, Ipswich_Triathlon_Club) finished in a time of 59:15.

Geoff Baulk (911, MK_Redway_Runners) finished in a time of 54:59.

Michaela Eyley (983, Massey_Runners) finished in a time of 1:16:44.

Dean Sartin (823, Olney_Runners) and Helen Margetts (427, Olney_Runners) finished in 52:45 and 52:46.

Nik Edwards (982, Shenley_Striders) finished in a time of 41:47.

Sue Torrance (854, Silson_AC) and Richard Popiel (470, Silson_AC) finished in 43:56 and 00:43:54.

Luke Watkins (869, Stratford_AC) finished in a time of 44:49.

Graham Ferris (985, Witney_Road_Runners) was 8th finishing in a time of 34:57.

Have you got the bottle?

Well done to this guy who ran inside a bottle! Was it Hooky Gold? And he wasn't last. He finished in a time of 1:13:50.

Postscript

If you did the Firkin 5 Mile Run in 2019 and want a reminder, then here's a link to all the photos that I took. There's a calculator on that web page that makes it easy to find the photos of a runner given their time and you can find the time from the results web page.

If you want to see the reviews I've done on other races, then here's a link to a web page that includes an index of the reviews of races.

I'm planning for my next review to be of the 2019 Pednor 5 and I'm aiming to post that on Mon May 25th 2020.

I maintain a web page for runners that provides a list of races near Oxfordshire and the latest results. Visit www.oxonraces.com and follow @oxonraces

This web page is at www.oxonraces.com/blog/2020-05-23-hook-norton. It was created on May 18th 2020 and last updated on May 23rd 2020.