Riversniffers’ No 1 son is quick on his feet. In fact when he was younger, a family friend used to call him “Billy Whiz”, after the character in the Beano.

The boy has never trained properly and never had any coaching, but he’s always done well at school and cadet running. Then someone suggested he try his luck in the annual Cabbage Patch 10.

The Cabbage Patch is a pub near Twickenham station, run by Frank Dupree and his daughters Elaine and Jan. 

Frank was for a long time a governor of Clarendon School in Hampton. He is a great supporter of community causes and since 1982 he has helped to promote and organise what has now become a major fund raising event for the school.

As the Cabbage Patch 10 website says:

“The Cabbage Patch 10 mile race is one of the flattest and best 10 milers in the country (Richard Nerurkar set an all time British record of 46 mins 2 secs in 1993). Starting and finishing in Twickenham the course follows a loop, crossing the river in Kingston and Richmond and as always race HQ is the Cabbage Patch pub in Twickenham.”

So on Sunday 19^th October the Riversniffer family accompanied our boy to Twickenham for a 10:00am start.

With approx 1500 entrants the start is quite hectic

Volunteer race marshalls help to organise the event and the police help to manage the traffic

Once the race has started, the runners go down Cross Deep, along to Hampton Wick, across Kingston Bridge, up the towpath on the other side, past Ham House, across Richmond Bridge and back to Twickenham to finish at York House.

The approach to the finish is along the pavement outside York House -  it is zoned off with barriers to keep the crowd from mixing with the runners. This chap had been cycling on the pavement and found himself funnelled across the finish line with the runners…

We managed to get a picture of the first three finishers…

1^st        Time: 0:48:28                         Scott Overall               Blackheath & Bromley Harriers

2^nd       Time: 0:49:23                         Moumin Geele             Newham & Essex Beagles

3^rd        Time: 0:53:13                         James Trapmore          Shaftesbury Barnet Harriers

The rest of the contestants arrived over the next hour or so, and long before the last stragglers finished the Riversniffers party were ready for a drink and something to eat. Where else should we go but the Cabbage Patch?

The Cabbage Patch

The Cabbage Patch is a vast pub. You might expect the service to be perfunctory, especially with the place being jammed solid after the race. But the service is cheerful, and the staff coped really well.

Our party duly got stuck into pints, and the beer was pronounced cracking. After a while we ordered some food – 3 x burgers and chips, 1 x salmon salad, one filo prawn starter and bangers and mash. Simple pub food, but when it arrived we were really astonished how good it was – great prawns, real homemade burgers, fantastic chips and the best bangers and mash that Riversniffer Senior had ever encountered. They might have been cooking for four people rather than the hundreds that were actually there.

The Cabbage Patch is big. But it is friendly and cheerful, the food is done with real care and it is really good value (see the menu on their website here).

In most operations the tone comes from the top, and with a community-minded landlord like Frank Dupree we think we can guess where the Cabbage Patch gets its positive feel from. Highly recommended.

P.S. How did the boy do?

Nonchalent youth. No training, no coaching, no running club. No race strategy either. He just ran round, and finished inside the top ten percent of all the finishers – and he wasn’t even out of breath at the end.

So now he’s joined a running club and with training and coaching we look forward to seeing how he does next year. Riversniffer Senior is looking forward to the bangers and mash already. Hope to see you there.