Archive for June, 2026

Wool Fest is an annual festival of wool that takes place at Armley Mills Museum. There are exhibitors telling yarn and knitted items, spinning demonstrations, music and morris dancing.

It’s not as big as Yarndale and the venue gives it a different flavour: you have so much history at the museum, but also does mean a lot of steps and squeezing through tight gaps around the machinery. Even the outside bits were undercover so the rain didn’t stop anything.

Last week, we can two more events for Leeds Autism Practice. The Science of AuDHD: Understanding Autism, ADHD, and How They Combine explored theories behind neurodivergence, including monotropism, double empathy, interest-based nervous systems, and many other theories. We then went onto explore what these looked like in a combined presentation of AuDHD.

The Constant Rabbit is a novel by Jasper Fforde. It tells of an alternative reality in which “the event” has transformed rabbits, and a few other animals, into anthropomorphised versions of themselves. It explores the political implications of having what are seen as an under-class of a million rabbits, paralleling fears about immigration, and played out through the love story of the protagonist and the rabbit who moves in next door. Well worth a read.

Six years ago, Toby had a dream: that every hour, for twelve hours, we would run three laps around Woodhouse Moor. After the psychiatrist discharged him from hospital, he set about making this dream a reality. Around the Park, Around the Clock was born. This year would be it’s sixth running.

The weather was good this year. Warm but not too hot and no rain all day. It was only a week after God’s Own Backyard Ultra meaning that if you include both weekends, ABC and parkrun, I was looking at 182km of running over the week. Luckily, no injuries, just fatigue.

The big race news was that Rich was away in the Lakes. Rich, Toby and myself were the only three to have done all twelve laps all five years and now sadly we’re down to two. There was no lack of experience, though. We worked out that Toby, Robyn and myself have now done 612 laps of Woodhouse Moor as part of this event. And probably over a thousand more if we threw in parkrun.

Loads of well dones and thank yous to give out: Toby, Robyn, Helen, Lara and Matt for completing the full thing. Naomi also completed a lap every hour. Elina for brining the picnic and Venla for getting a few laps in. My mum for completing an amazing 20k setting a new personal best distance, as did Sharron with 25k, and Donna running her first marathon/ultra with 45k complete. Toby for organising, another set of dozen facts, and the post-race pint. Everyone who dropped in and out to keep us company. And Robyn for making the trip over to provide her excellent company, despite having a 50k ultra and Windermere Marathon coming up on consecutive weekends.