Kingdom parkrun

This parkrunday I went back to Kent to climb the foresty hills of Kingdom parkrun for the first time. I decided to come this weekend because it happened to be a prime number event I did not have yet, but this event had been on my to-do list for quite a while. And it was one of those events that I had to visit in spring or summer. Regardless of what this means in the UK. Yeah, watch pics and the video to see what I mean. Sigh.

Funny how I have been returning to Kent for a few weeks now. No real reason, but the last few weeks brought me to Swanley parkrun and Dartford Heath parkrun. All very different events in a beautiful corner of the country. Will I eventually manage to become a Kent regionnaire? There are 25 events and I have visited 6 so far; it could be doable, but about a third of them are really far away. We’ll see, I guess.

I said this was one I had been keeping for dry months. Why? It’s a hilly trail run all through historic forests, a bit like the great but gruesome Wendover Woods parkrun, on the opposite side of the Capital. The location is really beautiful, even if foggy views did not impress. Just running in this beautiful mature forest paid for the trip. However, you need to climb that evil hill 3 times. I guess it is a bit better than Wendover Woods, which is a single lap with the first half going down and the first half making you re-think most of your life choices.

One more notable mention is that it gives you a K. Not many of those around the area where I live. For my first alphabet, I was lucky enough to leave relatively close to Kingston parkrun. This got me my second, which gets my second one to 20 letters I think. Which is all of the easy-ish ones. Eventually I will also try to get a second J, Q, Y and Z I guess. One day.

Anyway, enough with my rumblings. It’s time to dive into some more info about Kingdom parkrun!

Trip to Kingdom parkrun and parking

Kingdom is a beautiful activity and celebration centre just South-East of London, in Penshurst, Kent. Or for further points, about 7 miles away from Tunbridge Wells and Tonbridge. Like most location in this corner of the country, the M25 gets you close enough, but differently from my the targets of my last few visits, Kingdom parkrun requires a bit more of driving along local country roads.

This is not an easy one to reach by public transport and the skint sections of the official event site dedicated to it confirm it. I guess you technically can take a train, then a bus and then walk 20 minutes along busy country lanes, but it seems a bit of a stretch to me on parkrunday morning. But I am lazy, so I am sure there will be people motivated enough to do it.

The closest train station is Penshurst, which is 3.3 miles away from Kingdom parkrun according to the official event site. The station is served by Southern with fairly infrequent services to Tonbridge and Redhill. Then a bus can get you to Gleblands, which is still 1.2 miles away from the event meeting point. I tried to see what Citymapper would recommend me from Wimbledon, but it was not able to come up with any public transport combination to get me there. According to Google maps, the trip by public transport would take about 2h40m on a parkrunday morning and end with a 30 minutes walk.

I obviously went by car, which took me about 50 minutes by car. A fairly easy trip down to the M25, then off at the Sevenoaks exit and another 15 minutes drive through small local roads. I was following the postcode above and it got me to Grove Road. However, when it told me I had reached my destination I probably still had 500m to go before a sudden left turn after a bend surprised me. That was the entrance into Kingdom.

Go up that road and you will find the free car park by the cafe. I arrived at 8:30am and it was already nearly full. Plenty of volunteers where available to help sort things out, but don’t leave it to the last minute, you won’t be able to park if you do.

Kingdom parkrun: start and briefings

However you decided to come, you will get to the car park. Once there, just entered the park through the gate in front of the cafe and you will be in a clearing with the cafe on your left, a gym on your right and the Seven Sisters tree in front of you. That is the meeting point. When I visited, the event name pop up sign was by the wooden sign celebrating the Seven Sisters tree, the oldest tree in the country. Doesn’t seem to be a very healthy tree, if I am honest.

There were more than 100 parkrunners when I visited, but it did not look busy. The clearing where the meeting point is big enough for people to spread out. Also, while a few tourists showed up at the First Timers briefing, they were not a lot: nice to see a sizeable healthy local group for an event that is a bit out of the way.

The RD gave both the First Timers and the Main Briefings on the day of my visit. The former was a fun welcome focused on the route and its notable slippery bits. The Main Briefing focused on milestones and usually h&s warnings and then it was time to take the short walk to the start. Just a couple of minutes in a straight line towards ‘the loop’.

Then, I heard the RD start the countdown. ‘3, 2, 1, go!’. It was time to go.

Kingdom parkrun course review – star ratings

Kingdom parkrun course review – route highlights

There were 143 parkrunners on the day of my visit to Kingdom parkrun. This seems to be on the higher side of things when it comes to field size at this location, but not a record. I guess there is a bit of seasonality since it is a trail course. Not that weather was nice, but I guess people still have some naive hope in June. Average attendance seems to bounce between high double digits to around 150, with a peak of 188 on the second parkrunday of January. The apex of New Year Resolutions :). It was a bit busy at the start, but nothing terrible. Besides that, the field spreads out fast and it was always wide enough to a comfortable, pleasant run. Sometimes you might want to stray onto the grassy edges to overtake, but that’s ok.

There aren’t any real bottlenecks around this course, but there are a couple of areas to keep in mind. Roughly 2/3 of the way down on the downhill sections, you will meet a spot named ‘Slippery Corner’. As you can guess, it can be slippery. It is a tight right turn with the path sloping the other way. It was not an issue when I visited because it was dry, but I am sure it can be a problematic spot when wet or muddy. At the bottom of the downhill, you will then enter the section the team named the ‘washing machine’. It is wide bendy turnaround point with a steep but short ramp on a tight turn towards the end. Again, all in all it is not difficult and better than a 180-degrees turnaround point around a cone, but the ramp might be slightly trickier when wet.

Surface-wise, this is a trail path. I visited under perfect conditions and run on road shoes with no problems, but I would recommend trail shoes most days. The paths are mostly hard compact gravel with some segments featuring old bricks. I am sure it can get pretty slippery when even slightly wet. A bit more grip would have helped, even on a dry day.

Elevation-wise, this is the definition of hilly. Each lap is half downhill and half back to the top. The kind of course design that might require a healthy dose of sadism to come up with. Or just the necessary compromise to run in such a beautiful place, you take your pick. It kind of reminds me Huddinge parkrun, just outside of Stockholm. In that case, I had described the elevation profile as 3 witch hats. In this case, you start downhill, so it is more 3 pits of doom, but you get the feeling, I guess. The downhill is never too steep and the uphill is made up of 2 main climbs which are tough but not horrendous. I’ve seen worse, to be honest.

In terms of course layout, Kingdom parkrun is essentially an out and back repeated three times. However, you never have any double-flow segment, with the downhill and uphill paths running parallel to each other, separated by a couple of metres of trees. The turnaround is also a wide, twisty loop, so an improvement on the turnaround cone theme.

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

After the briefing, everyone walks for a few metres towards the forest and the main walking and running loop. It is a very short uphill walk to the top of the hill. Then the pack gets more tight and the countdown comes. Time to go. At the beginning it is a busy run on a decently wide path. Flat for a few metres before it starts going downhill. And it will be downhill for half a mile, so don’t get yourself be taken over by too much enthusiasm. Gravity helps, but if you overdo it (as I did, obviously), you will suffer even more on the way up. And it’s a loop, so what goes down needs to come back up.

The way down is fun. The downhill gradient is not too steep, but steep enough to be noticeable. The path alternates from wide section to narrower ones. Often with mature trees on both sides and, occasionally some more open air clearings. Every now and then you get to a clearing where you can see the path for the way back on the other side. Some cones of shame will stop you from turning and going up too early. Respect the cones of shame.

A couple of times the path doubles back on itself, with a wide left turn before a wide right turn. Funny thing: my feeling during the run was that the way down was twisty and turny, while the way up was much more a straight line. Looking at the map, this was not the case, since they are mostly parallel to each other. Guess while suffering on the climb I paid less attention to the direction.

About 2/3 down, you reach ‘Slippery Turn’. Approach a bush and immediately after, hard right turn on a sloping path. It was easy and comfortable on the day of my visit, who knows how bad it can be on wet parkrundays. After that, it is a short straight segments with some nice pink flowers to the side before reaching the washing machine section. Which is the loopy turnaround section at the end of the out and back. A volunteer will be here managing traffic and encouraging people who have just enjoyed the downhill and don’t really know how bad the way up is. The first time they get there, at least.

The washing machine is a wide 3/4 circle segment that turns up and back on itself and then you run the same 3/4 circle the other way again parallel to the first time. At the end you alight again where the volunteer was before and run past him in the opposite direction. You are now starting the way up, also known as the bloody climb.

The climb starts flattish, with a short straight going by a scenic view with open vistas on your right. At the end of this segment, when you start having trees on both sides, the climb starts. It is not terribly steep, but it is long. Keep going up parallel to the previous path and you will go through 2 long(ish) climbs with one start flat segment in between. At the end, you reach the top and run a very short straight segments with the cafe in view through the trees. But why would course designers refrain from one final nasty surprise?

Instead of turning towards the meeting area to restart the loop, you turn right and enter a tree covered steep(ish) downhill segment. Finally, right? But the fundamental law of running physics is that if you are enjoying a downhill, you will pay for that pleasure with interest. Exit the little tree covered area and you are on the opposite side of the cafe, at its lower level. Turn left going by the cafe and then climb on the other side to reach the original meeting point. Time to start another lap, and then a third one.

At the end of the third lap, survive the final mini climb and parade by the cafe, before turning slightly left to enter the finish funnel.

Congratulations on completing Kingdom parkrun!

Facilities at Kingdom parkrun

Kingdom is a pretty nice location, with a lot to offer for relaxation, wellness and outdoor exercise.

Toilets are available before the event outside the main cafe. Just up the stairs from the meeting point area. They are single stalls, so a queue formed when I visited, so don’t linger around until 8:50 and then decide you need the loo. You will miss the briefings if you do.

The cafe is the centre of this area, with a large outdoor seating area overlooking the nice views over Kent. After the event there will be a long queue to be served, but service is decently quick. They do table service unless you order take away, so leave some friends at a table and remember your table number if you want to enjoy your deserved rest sitting outside. Nice note, coffee is free if you order food for parkrunners and apparently you get a breakfast bap for free too if you are celebrating a milestone.

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 Kingdom parkrun, I ordered a lemon muffing, a diet coke and a single espresso. This cost me £8.2. Considering the coffee was supposed to be free, not a cheap place.

Kingdom 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

Even if the weather did not help, I really enjoyed my first visit to Kingdom parkrun. It is a tough course, but it is fun and swapping from uphill to downhill so many times make the uphill less gruesome than an other more unforgiving events. The place is beautiful and I am sure many people could make a whole morning out of a visit.

I would love to come back and who knows, maybe something in the future will bring me to the area once again.

Finally, obviously, thank you, Kingdom parkrun team for your hospitality!