National Trust and Sport England partnership showcase athletics and running at Wimpole Estate

The National Trust Sport Development Programme is a partnership between the National Trust and Sport England. The programme was introduced to Wimpole 2 years ago, and has continued to grow since then.

A family games weekend held recently - in partnership with England Athletics amongst others - was an opportunity for visitors to try something new and at the same time celebrating and showcasing some great sports and activities available at Wimpole and through local clubs.  The weekend was a huge success; the fitness course experienced around 800 participants and the athletics around 140.

Wimpole supports an Introduction to Running group which is a regular activity organised by 2 LIRF instructors and averages 16 runners per week.  There are also Run England 3-2-1 routes  that can be used through the Summer and Winter).  5k parkruns are also held every Saturday and Junior 2k runs on Sundays which included this special weekend.

The weekend offered three activities for children, and the odd 'competitive Dad', to test their athletic abilities. These were a standing jump, speed bounce and foam javelin throw. Over the space of five hours around 140 children aged from 3 to 14 keen to see if they could beat the age-related targets that had been set. One of the coaches from Cambridge and Coleridge AC noted, "In some cases, the targets were more than exceeded and we suggested to their parents their child should consider joining an athletics club to develop their obvious abilities. I believe a number of parents went home that day surprised to find they may have a budding athlete in the family."

One of the visitors commented, "Both myself and my family had an absolutely wonderful day at Wimpole Estate today. We started out on the BG kids race which was superbly organised and my 4 year old loved it and begged to go again (she'd never done anything like that before).  Wimpole estate is an absolute credit to the National Trust and the volunteers who help and today's activities were different, fun, inspirational and well organised. A fantastic day, thank you to you all!