Bushy parkrun (#117)

I had already been at Bushy Parkrun 3 times before my last visit and coming back is always a pleasure. Usually the largest event in the UK, it is not unusual to find more than 1500 other parkrunners here and the atmosphere is truly unique. Today, given the absurd heat for a September morning, it was a low turnout day, just a touch below 1300. Small 🙂

On 2 October 2004, 13 people came together to run a ‘timed’ 5K in a park. It was the first of what would become the Time Trials and soon see another location join in, my home locations Wimbledon Common. Things have grown a tiny bit since then and hopefully they will keep growing, making parkrun as successful abroad as it is in the UK, Ireland, Australia and South Africa. I’m sure the movement can conquer not anglo countries, in time.

I had no parkrun challenges chasing ulterior motives today. A couple of weeks ago I put my parkruning targets for a few weeks in the the planner section of the 5K app and for some reason I had picked Bushy parkrun for today. I honestly don’t remember what the thinking was. Maybe it was just me feeling the pull of the home of parkrun after not having visited for nearly 2 years. Or maybe it was a way to ease from mass event attendance levels, after having been fortunate enough to join the Big Half last Sunday. Going from 15K runner to 1.2K might seem a big jump, but a 5K is more compact by definition. 🙂

Bushy Park is not far from where I live in Wimbledon, so going back is always a convenient break from touristing and discover new locations, since those are starting to become consistently pretty far.

But let’s dive into some more info abou Bushy parkrun: it has become a parkrun requirement to have at least one ‘pilgrimage’ to our original Home for all parkrunners, so I hope some info will be helpful for people donning their pilgrim robes in the future.

Trip to Bushy parkrun and parking

Bushy parkrun is, technically, in London. But it isn’t really in London, is it? The border between London and Surrey is blurred at best, so I won’t try to pick an acceptable definition, It is in London, but it does not benefit from easy transport options, even if it still served by TFL.

If you are brave enough to use public transport, the closest stations are Hampton Court or Teddington. And then it’s time to walk.

Out of curiosity, I’ve checked how long it would take me to get there by public transport from Wimbledon and Citymapper says it would take me about 70 minutes. For a trip that, as the crow flies, must not be more than 15/20Km.

So yeah, I drove there. It’s extremely easy from Wimbledon: straight to the A3, exit for Staines and then a short section on local roads up to Hampton Court. Cross the river, pass the Palace and you are in Bushy Park.

Cars turning into the park this early on a parkrunday will be going to one place only, the Diana Fountain car park. It is just off the central roundabout in the middle of the park, no way to get lost if you got into the park.

The parking is very large for a Royal Park, but this is a remote location for London and many people come by car, so by 8:20/8:30 max it will be full. And if it is full, you have no alternatives you can reach in the park.

So, if you drive, go early. Everything will be a couple of minutes walk from the car park, so it might seem unnecessary, but waiting in your car 10 minutes is better than driving there and then having to accept you have wasted a trip.

Bushy parkrun: start and briefings

Part of the charm of Bushy parkrun is seeing what an incredibly efficient and well oiled organisation the team have managed to consolidate over the last 20 years. You need pretty efficient logistics to accomodate up to 2,000 runners every Saturday morning in a Royal Park. And they make it seem easy. Kudos to the 60+ volunteers that make it possible week in and week out, seriously.

The parkrunners’ meeting point is visible from the parking, probably around 200 metres in straight line going East. Unless you get here before 8am, the area will be so busy that you will see where people are and where the herd is going.

By the meeting point, you will find a toilet block, open early. They are not huge, but even with the massive numbers that come here, I’ve never had to queue. Even this is magically efficient.

The New Runners briefing happens by the children playground, roughly in the same area, which conveniently is a large empty field that can accomodate several thousands easily. Things do feel a bit more impersonal here due to very large numbers, but the team still manage to throw in the odd comment to keep it real and friendly and they are always very welcoming to the hordes of tourists that come weekly for the required pilgrimage dues.

A few minutes before 9am everyone walks 100/150 metres South on the same field and start lining up for a very wide field start. Which helps a lot, because even with massive numbers, you are never going to be more than a few metres away from the real start line, avoiding big differences between ‘gun time’ and the 5K time recorded by your watch. After everyone has lined up, the official pre-run briefing happens via loudspeaker and everyone is sent off swiftly.

Bushy parkrun course review – star ratings

Bushy parkrun course review – route highlights

There were just shy of 1300 parkrunners on the day I visited: an average to low attendance day for Bushy. But I guess it being the hottest day of 2023 in the UK might have had a bit of an impact. The start line is the widest I’ve ever seen anywhere at parkrun, so starting feels less congested than most other venues I’ve visited. Even if it had at least twice the average runners. Things get busier soon thereafter, for people who want to stick to the path, but there is plenty of space on grass next to it if you want a bit more space. After that, it will remain busy for most of the route, with a couple of turns potentially turning into bottlenecks. Nothing terrible, but it will detract from potential PBs unless you are at the front.

Most of the course is on hard paths, with a couple of sections on grass at the beginning and around the 4K mark and one short section on paved path. I’ve been here both in winter and summer and I’ve never felt trail shoes were an absolute requirement.

Elevation-wise, this course is very flat. At 5 metres net elevation gain, you can hardly argue with that. There are a few minor bumps, but to be honest, there isn’t really any noticeable change in elevation throughout. Either way.

Finally, this is one of the rare parkrun unicorns that offer you 5K in one lap. I very much prefer those, they are more interesting and the sense of accomplishment is more easily relatable. Subjective, I know. But I don’t care, I just like them more 🙂

A quick Relive route plot is on my YouTube Channel, with longer video highlights embedded below.

As said, the start is on a wide field and the barbaric horde has about 200 metres to thin out and slowly converge towards the right of the start line. At that point, after avoiding a tree, a bin and a bench, hopefully with limited fatalities, people will move towards the first proper hard unpaved path. There is no way the field has thinned out enough here to fit everyone on the path by this point, so instead of stopping and sitting down for a game of cards waiting for their turn here, people naturally split out: roughly half on the path, a third on natural paths in the field about 10 metres to the left of the main path and the rest on grass in between these two groups.

This goes on for about 1k, on a long straight going East. There isn’t much in terms of features during this straight: it is mostly opened path on the side of a green meadow, with a couple of large trees along the way. The fun here is finding a way to keep close to your target pace without smashing into other runners or letting others push you to go out too hard.

At the end of this straight, there is a 90 degrees turn left that is wide enough not to turn into a bottleneck, followed by a short straight open to the scorching sun before a turn left that will lead into a small wooded area. I stopped after this last turn here and turned around to take a picture: the park is gorgeous, open and wide, but what really did for me was looking at the endless line of runners still going back most of the initial straight. It really gave me an idea of the scale of what happens here at Bushy parkrun every week.

After you pass the little wooded area you are again out in the open and approach a little bridge over a stream where one of the many marshalls will be waiting to make sure nobody goes swimming. After this point I had a slight feeling of descent, but it might just be me.

You keep going for a little while until a sharp right brings you back under a tree-lined path for a short while. This turn was busy again, with people splitting up to two sides of a tree and I have to admit I think I’ve taken the shorter side which was probably technically not the official route and I might have cheated 5/10 metres away. Bad boy.

As the case seems to be at Bushy Park, none of these ‘tree lined’ areas are more than a mirage in the scorching sun of our Indian summer… it’s gone in a glimpse and we are crossing in the middle of two untended fields before quickly turning left to tackle the next long straight of the course. The one going North-West in the map above. This one felt longer than the first one, but it might be just because I was tired and dehydrated. A few trees show up here and there, making fun of your deluded hopes that there could be some sustained shade.

At the end of this straight there is another sharp turn left and the next straight will be on grass. Here you are running to the side of Chestnut Avenue, on a very wide, well tended field.

You might think at this point you would just go straight and be home, but why not add a bit more fun, so roughly half way through Chestnut Avenue, the route loops back left again towards the centre of the park and there is another straight going East. East happens to be where the annoying yellow ball in the sky happens to be in the morning and we were definitely running towards it. Look at the video embedded below: it was like willingly running towards a furnace. Fun? Not really 🙂

At the end of this segment, you see a large number of volunteers, which might seem strange, but this is the section where the first half and the second half of the course come close together, so you better not go straight. When I arrived there to turn right one last time towards the end, I saw what I thought were the tailwalkers coming through on the other side.

Then you turn, run a big of zig-zag, cross a nice little bridge and coast on the side of a lake before reaching the finish funnel. You can start sprinting towards the end of the lake, if you still have energy in the tank.

The funnel was long and slow, but extremely efficient given the numbers present, It was a double funnel on the day, but they are known to run a triple funnel as well on their busiest days. I am sure there are some mix-ups with such a large field, but the time I got every time always appeared to be just about right, so this complex system definitely seems to work.

Well done, you have completed your Bushy pilgrimage!

Facilities at Bushy parkrun

The toilet is by the start as written above and it is open early.

The cafe by the parking, which also happens just a short walk from where the finish funnel is. Queues for the cafe are not terrible, probably because of the obscene prices they charge. Quality is good though, and parkbreakfast is an experience I will never deny myself if it is available.

As a competitor to the McDonald’s index, I am continuing to collect data for the parkbreakfast index: how much is breakfast at each location? At Bushy parkrun, I ordered a single espresso, a Diet Coke and a muffin at the small Cafe Colicci by the finish line. This cost £8.5, which is kind of extortionate for what it was. The cafe owners know people have no alternatives and fully take advantage of it.

Bushy Park parkrun: Video Highlights

As usual, I’ve taken a few video snippets during the run to give an idea of the course. If you like it, please subscribe, it’s a fun past time for me 🙂

The other parkrun videos on my YouTube channel are all linked on the course review and video highlights summary page.

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Achievements and performance

Conclusions

This is a must do for most parkrunners and roughly an annual visit for me. The park is gorgeous, the route is ok, flat and fun, but not offering any unforgettable feature or sights. What is unique is the number of people it can accomodate in an extremely efficient way. It is definitely worth experiencing. I attended a Christmas parkrun here a couple of years ago and it was definitely unique: nearly 2000 santas and turkeys running around in the cold was a sight to remember 🙂

See you next time, Bushy parkrun.

Thank you, Bushy parkrun team for your hospitality! Again