10 out of 10

Raymond Cox, the race director of the Clerical Medical Parish Walk, called around to see me last week to brief me on the developments for the 2008 event. I took the opportunity to interview him for the www.parishwalk.com site.

We got talking about a few things before I realised that he had never seen the paper I wrote in 1990 just a few weeks after Clerical Medical’s first sponsorship.

Entitled “The CMI Parish Walk – the Biggest and Best Walking Race in Great Britain for the 1990’s” it was my vision of how the event could be much bigger than it was at the time. I’ll refer back to this from time to time for reference, but as Ray and I glanced over it, one of my suggestions caught my eye.

In the month’s ahead I will make many a mention to the late Arthur Jones, the secretary of the event for around 25 years. I consider Arthur to be one of the most marvellous community spirited people not to have received an honour. But Arthur’s strength was in his administration and he was not a marketing person. The event was there for everyone and entry forms were always available a few weeks before the Parish Walk and this information was always published in the press.

I felt that the event would grow more if it was promoted much earlier and suggested as point number 6 that advertising should be placed in the local press the week after Easter!

I would never have dreamt that entries would open on 1 December.

In fairness to me, point number 3 was that advertising should commence in the Race Walking Record in December each year.

Well, the website and the online entries were launched at midnight on 1 December and Richard Wild was the first to enter on his way home from the pub! The first ten to enter (all by 2 December) were (in alphabetical order):

Chris Cale
Roger Hammond Cave
Bob Corrin
Keith Green
Alan Johnston
Lee Kelly
Dave Mackey
Trudi Telling
Jock Waddington
Richard Wild

Another bit of Parish Walk history.