Last Sunday’s Spartan Event in Milton Country Park was a great success for the Park but did cause some problems for the village, as you’ll know if you read milton-chat or you live in the Fen Road area or the high street as the queue stretched back that far resulting in people parking in all the streets around rather than in the official car park in Fen Road.

We’ve spoken to Mick Woolhouse of Cambridge Sport Lakes Trust about this since and the key points from that discussion were:

• This won’t be the last such event as it does bring in quite a lot of much needed money, although the Park only plan to have one event on this scale every year.
• The Zombie Evacuation event on 25th October mentioned on milton-chat which it was suggested might be bigger than the Spartan event will actually be a lot smaller: the Spartan event had 3,000 entrants, the Zombie event is restricted to a maximum of 1,000 entrants and there are no plans to use the Fen Road parking this time.
• The option of using “Mrs Wilson’s” field has been investigated both for past events and for the Spartan event but it’s not as big a field as the one down Fen Road and there’s also an issue for the police with what happens if the queue gets as far as the A10/A14 roundabout and starts to result in queuing down onto the A14.
• Although the Spartan organisers did tell some people in Fen Road the event was going to happen by knocking on doors it’s obvious that they missed people so next time they will leaflet everyone to ensure everyone knows.
• The Spartan organisers were meant to provide stewards at side roads, Shirley Close in particular, to steer people away from parking there which they didn’t do. For future events Cambridge Sport Lakes Trust will liaise with the police and highways agency to provide “no parking” cones to deter on street parking by none residents.

If you have any further queries or comments on this and future events then Mick is happy to discuss them with you by email mcp@cambridgesportlakes.org.uk or phone 420060.