Beckenham Place parkrun

This week I returned to Beckenham Place parkrun for the second time. It was one of the few London events I had not covered on my blog, so it was bound to happen in the near future. Since I achieved LonDone status about 6 months ago at Valentines parkrun, I have been working through the few events in this category and after this week there are only 3 left. All 3 are events best visited in summer, so maybe I will accelerate those visits over the next few weeks. Maybe.

I did not plan to visit a London events this week. After several weeks taking advantage of summer weather to explore events around the Home Counties and a German escapade to Westpark parkrun in Munich last week, this week I had originally planned to explore one of the events around Reading. However, the heatwave came to an abrupt conclusion and on parkrun eve I suddenly realised the Met Office had a weather warning out for parkrunday morning. I got a notification from my home event, Wimbledon parkrun, that they were going to cancel, and they rarely do. Something serious coming?

Before going to bed I checked the official page listing parkrun cancellations and saw that many London events had in the meanwhile decided to cancel as well. So I wimped out from my travel plans and decided to tick one of the remaining boxes closer to home. I still took a bit of a risk because the Beckenham Place parkrun Facebook page said they might have to cancel, but I was lucky. I once travelled all the way to Harrow parkrun and found out they had decided to cancel minutes before I got there, at least this time I did not have disappointing surprises.

I last visited Beckenham Place parkrun in October 2022, the week after running the Berlin marathon. That was a weird time, pretty much when my fitness started going down the drain slowly because of unrelated events. I remembered this event as a nice one, but there was a lot I did not remember about it. Memories started coming back when I arrived and it is really a gem among the London ones. A rare one lapper with a great cafe and a fun course. Kind of similar to Harrow Lodge parkrun, but even more memorable. Shame I came back with awful weather, I shall definitely come back once more at least!

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

Trip to Beckenham Place parkrun and parking

The event takes place at Beckenham Place park, in Lewisham, South London. The area has a BR postcode, being at the Southern edge of Lewisham, close to the boundaries with leafier, suburban Bromley. The South East London location is not far from the centre and from many other events. However, as it is often the case in this part of London, tube connections are less than optimal.

According to the official event site, the closest stations are Beckeham Hill and Beckeham Junction. The former is served by Southeastern and Thameslink, with connections to Blackfriars, Stanley and Sevenoaks. Looking at a map, the station is just outside the park, but it is a big park. To get to the parkrun meeting point you will have to walk about 15 minutes or just more than half a mile. The latter station is served by Southeastern and Southern with connections to London Victoria and Orpington. From the opposite side of the park, this is about three quarters of a mile away.

If you are driving, the postcode for your gps is SE6 3PU, to reach the Beckenham Hill Road entrance to the park. Once you get there, mind the very sharp turn into the park and then drive through it for a few 100s metres. You will then reach the sizeable car park just in front of the cafe and shops. The car parking fee can be paid via the Paybyphone app and it is not cheap. I paid for 3hrs and it cost me £12.5.

When you leave the car park, enter the courtyard of the cafe buildings if you need a toilet pit stop or turn right on the main carriageway and walk a couple of minutes to reach Beckenham Place parkrun meeting point.

Backenham Place parkrun: start and briefings

If you come from the car park, just leave it and the cluster of buildings with cafe and toilets, among other things, will be in front of you. Just turn your head to the right and you will see the parkrun meeting point, maybe 100/150 metres away. Head that way and as you approach it, trees on the left will open up to show open fields and the beautiful mansion house.

On the day I visited it was pouring rain, so the front porch of the mansion house was extremely handy as a waiting area for the few crazily obsessed parkrunners who had braved the weather warning to join. Me being one of the, off course.

I missed the First Timers briefing in the slightly messy lead up preparations with volunteers having to deal with dry spells and sudden downpours. However, the Main Briefing was very clearly and loudly delivered, with the RD coming to the front porch refuge and going through all the relevant information. Special mention for one visitor coming from Sweden, welcome to the UK . I enjoyed my Swedish parkrun trip to Huddinge parkrun for the special event two years ago. Weather was much better in Stockholm!

After the briefing, everybody crossed the grass clearing and lined up on the wide carriageway where the meeting point was. I guess on good days, the briefing are probably delivered while people are already standing in the right place. The carriageway is wide and parkrunners can conveniently seed themselves, heading away from the car park.

Then, with no further wait, I heard the RD start the countdown. 3, 2, 1, go!. The party had begun.

Beckenham Place parkrun course review – star ratings

Beckenham Place parkrun course review – route highlights

There were 167 parkrunners on the day of my last visit to Beckenham Place parkrun. This would be a good, relatively busy field for many events, and it was indeed well attended and fun, but it is roughly half the usual field at this event. Weather kept people in bed, I guess. Understandable. Normally, this event seems to see 300-350 parkrunners, with some days close to or at 400, so it is definitely a popular one. During the wettest winter times, some events go below 300, but not that much. Paths around the course are usually fairly wide, with a few narrow bits here and there, so I have no doubt this event can be enjoyable on busier days.

There aren’t any scary bottlenecks around the course. A few minor spots worth noting though. After the lake look there is a 270-degrees sharp corner at the bottom of a downhill, so be aware of it in advance. There are signs warning of it. Then after the first woodland segment, there is a downhill section on smooth tarmac: I found it quite slippery and it was only after a few hours of heavy rain, so I suppose in winter it can be even more so. All in all, wear trail shoes in most weathers and you will be fine.

Surface-wise, this is a mixed terrain course. It starts on tarmac and there are a few more short segments on tarmac along the way. However, it is mostly compacted gravel or woodland trail. The former is ok, but very prone to puddles, the latter seems to drain better, but you will have the usual roots, stones and irregularities to watch for. I really enjoyed the woodland segments myself. I ran at the end of a dry heatwave, after a few hours of heavy rain and there were a lot of puddles but little to no mud. I suspect, running here in winter might be fun: wear trail shoes.

Elevation-wise, at 45m elevation gain over 1 single lap, this could be classed as mildly undulating. And that’s probably the right classification: there are a few uphills leading to and within the woodland section, but I don’t remember any scary and painful one. The downhill were more noticeable to me, but that’s probably because the rain made them so slippery. When running through one, I thought it would be a good idea to hop onto the grassy verges to overtake. Clearly, I am an idiot and you can enjoy me falling down in the video highlights below.

Course layout here is a bit too messy to provide a turn by turn description. However, it starts with a straight on tarmac, then it transitions into a long, wiggly woodland segment. This then leads to a wide loop around a small lake and a final loop around a big meadow. Clear, right? 🙂

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

Beckenham Place parkrun starts on a wide, paved carriageway, so no issues with congestion. You start running with mature trees on your left, then after a short while that side opens up on a green meadow. Keep running in a slight downhill for about 100m until you take a like left turn and start climbing towards the trees, while crossing that field. At the end of the climb, you enter the woodlands, which will be your friends for the first part of the morning.

No chance I can try to describe the woodland section on a turn by turn basis as I usually do. It’s an experience that needs to be had. You will spend about half of your run going up and down, left and right while crossing a beautiful, mature little forest. The path is actually pretty decent, with some roots and rocks, but I have never found them problematic. Soil also seems to drain better than the open sections, so there weren’t as many puddles.

About half way through this segment, there is a short downhill segment with a narrower path and a meadow to the side. The path here was pretty slippery, but I was enthusiastically enjoying gravity’s help. And when I approached a couple of other parkrunners I could not overtake on the path, what did my brilliant mind conceive? Step off the path and let it go on grass, because grass will not be as slippery as hard gravel. Right? You can see part of my scenic fall on the video below. It goes without saying, I did not manage to overtake.

After this external segment, you go back inside the little forest for a little big more wiggling, until you reach a turning point that shows the path coming back the other way. The first time you turn left and head off for a long detour around the little lake that occupies this part of the park. Most of it is flat and on good terrain, with the lake coming in good view only after the halfway point of this detour. As you get towards the end of this segment, you start going downhill towards the original turnaround point where you had entered this segment. At the bottom of this downhill, take a sharp 270-degrees turn left and to enter another short woodland trail segment.

It won’t be long before you reach another turnaround point where you could turn left and head towards the finish funnel. Don’t be tempted, because you have to turn right here. Keep going for a short while and cross a bridge, while seeing faster runners coming back in the opposite direction. Yes, there is a short two-way flow segment. On the other side of the bridge, turn right after about 15/20 metres and you are now starting a large loop around an open meadow. At the opposite side of this loop, cross a little bridge and run along another small lake for a short while, before heading back towards the same corner where you entered this loop.

The last bit of the loop is a long, narrow tree-lined paved straight, before turning left and going quickly back to the bridge corner after a few twists and turns. Cross the bridge again on the other directions and reach the point where you had originally turned right. Now turn right again, but towards an open field. Go straight for another 100m before turning 90-degrees right and heading towards the finish funnel.

It’s not long before you reach home and get through the funnel at the bottom of a little hill on the back of the mansion house.

Congratulations on completing Beckenham Place parkrun!

Facilities at Beckenham Place parkrun

The meeting point and start line are very close to the Homestead Courtyard cluster of buildings. The finish funnel is just downhill from it, less than 5 minutes walk away. This is the closest focal points for services and post event refreshments. It is actually a pretty area, with a nice cafe, some shops, public toilets and a beautiful outdoor seating area. A portion of the seating area not visible in the picture below was also set up to be usable under pouring rain, with a sizeable hard canvas cover over several tables.

Toilets are available and clean. They were open before and after the event and accessible just to the right of the cafe doors.

After the run, parkrunners can take advantage of the welcoming cafe offering plenty of sweet and savoury options. You order and pick up easy orders inside the building and then warm beverages and more complex orders are delivered at a bench outside the cafe. Efficient.

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 Beckenham Place parkrun, I ordered a replacement diet coke, a banana simil-brownie and a single espresso. This cost me £8.6. Kind of expensive for what it was, but better than some of the genuinely obscene prices I’ve started to see in cafes around the South East over the last few months.

Beckenham Place 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

I had been here before, but for some reason I did not remember what a special event Beckenham Place parkrun is. First of all, there aren’t many one-lap events in London and to top it all off, this is a very interesting course with a lot of different features. I would dare say, this is the most interesting one-lapper in town. Come and check it out, ideally not when it is pouring rain.

I would love to be back and I probably will.

Finally, obviously, thank you, Beckenham Place parkrun team for your hospitality, once again! See you soon, hopefully.