A trio of seagulls released from Teignmouth seafront at the beginning of the month have already made it as far afield as the USA, Germany and Poland.

The model seagulls were presented to three visitors to Teignmouth Promenade parkrun on Saturday May 3.

‘The idea is that visitors to Teignmouth parkrun take one of the seagulls to their next parkrun and then hand it to another parkrun tourist to do the same,’ said Teignmouth parkrun event director Paul Burgess.

Named after Teignmouth Promenade parkrun’s longest-standing volunteers, Keith, Jerry and Paul, each seagull has a tag attached to explain who they are and encouraging holders to pass it on to another parkrun tourist.

‘It’s a bit of fun and we hope to get Paul, Jerry and Keith around the world,’ Paul explained.

All three seagulls are already overseas. Paul is in Germany, Jerry is in Poland and Keith has made it all the way across the Atlantic Ocean to St Louis, Missouri, the United States.

‘Hopefully this will generate some international publicity and show what a great town Teignmouth is,’ Paul enthused.

Since it launched in September 2019 Teignmouth parkrun has held more than 260 events. More than 13,500 people have finished the 5km course and over 700 people have volunteered to help run the event.

Parkrun is a free, friendly community event open to anyone to run, jog, walk, volunteer or spectate. The Teignmouth Promenade event takes place at 9am every Saturday on the seafront.

All participants need to do to take part is register on the parkrun website and bring a scannable copy of a personalised barcode.

There are 1,330 parkrun events across the UK. The movement started in 2004 when 13 runners and five volunteers got together in Bushy Park in Teddington, near London. There are now over nine million registered parkrunners across the world.