Advertisement
Not a good night’s sleep. The hotel has my pet hate; the flimsy bed/mattress topper combo. Every time the old man turns over, it’s like riding a small tsunami. And don’t get me started on the ripple effects from his farts. And there’s no a/c so we have our own personal Swedish sauna.
Today is Swedish National day, which means parkrun on a Thursday. The start is 2 miles away, so first I have to work out how to get there when walking is such a chore. Google maps suggests an electric scooter. I consider it, but can’t work out whether to lead with my good or bad leg. So opt for a good old fashioned bus.
I leave in plenty of time in case anything goes wrong, which it does. My card is declined and the driver won’t take cash. At least he’s started driving before the transaction fails so I get kicked off one stop later. I contemplate buying a travel card and waiting for the next bus, then give up and walk, arriving at the park with minutes to spare.
Today I am ‘tail walker’ which appears to translate into Swedish as ‘babysitter’. Before I
realise what’s happening, a Swedish man has dumped two sullen kids in flip flops with me and disappeared. The course is a figure of 8, which consists of 3 km where, together with the other tail walker (a very nice lady from Aberdeen) we cajole the sullen children into walking when they don’t want to. At the crossover, we dump them with their dad and (after I have given him my full and frank opinion – well, he did ask how it went!) we run the remaining 2 km as fast as possible to catch up to the back of the rest of the field. I finish in 55 minutes and am completely shattered. I’m not sure how fast we ran the final 2 km; the first 3 km were slow that my Strava lost interest and turned itself off.
I find the old man, who has been waiting for some time and is not happy as my delayed return means we have missed breakfast. We walk back to the hotel. In all, my knee has managed 7 miles, which is good (I think).
We check out and catch a train back to Denmark . Next parkrun is
in Copenhagen in 44 hours.
We check into our hotel; SleepCPH. As the name suggests, it’s a place to sleep, but that’s about it. I feel like I’m in a 30 year time warp and back in student halls. The room contains a bed, table and clothes rail. At the end of the corridor are a communal kitchen and bathroom. And this basic provision, 3 miles from the centre of town, costs £92 a night.
The hotel’s main selling point – its proximity to parkrun. The receptionist says many of their guests are parkrunners. In fact, in the kitchen is a 3 metre long photo of the route for guests to visually feast on.
It’s another scorcher of a day, so I hobble to the shop to buy drinks. There are signs around the hotel stating that no alcohol is allowed on the premises. The only decoration in my sparse yet expensive room is a Warholesque picture of James Dean. I ask myself ‘what would James do?’ And I buy beer.
I’m the evening, the old man takes a walk into town. I opt for a more leisurely evening. My knee has managed 8 miles, which
is more than I’ve covered in the past 2 weeks altogether. So I take it easy watching tennis on my phone (£92 a night doesn’t get you a tv).
Advertisement
Tot: 0.093s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 13; qc: 29; dbt: 0.0573s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Malmö Ribersborg parkrun
non-member comment
Thank you for volunteering
Hi Jane, We're sorry to hear that you had a bad experience at our parkrun. Thank you for volunteering. We hope you enjoy Copenhagen and the rest of your trip.