Leavesden Country parkrun

This week I’ve visited Leavesden Country parkrun for the first time. It had been on my todo list for a while, as one of the few venues left for me to complete LonDone+ and one I had noticed when I had brought my niece to Harry Potter’s Studios a few months ago.

After visiting Leavesden Country parkrun, I have been at 78 out of 81 events within the M25. The last addition was Dartford parkrun, at the complete opposite side of the capital. The remaining events on the list are all on this North Western corner of Greater London. I am still missing events closer to the centre, while I strayed towards the St. Albans region a few times. The obligatory Jersey Farm parkrun for my first alphabet and the newly introduced Oaklands College. Will come back to these parts again for sure.

I finally decided to come over the Leavesden parkrun because I randomly realised this week would also tick a prime numbers box for me. So why not, right?

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

Trip to Leavesden Country parkrun and parking

The event takes place at Leavesden Country Park, in Abbots Langley, Hertfordshire. A large 27he green area, it offers a large number of walking paths, children’s play areas and outdoor exercise facilities. With a hub around a cluster of buildings hosting a cafe, which is where you will need to head to join Leavesden Country parkrun.

According to the official event site, there are no obvious train stations nearby. Coming from SW London, google suggests Watford Junction train station from Euston. From there, however, I would still need to hop on a bus for 25 minutes and then walk about 5 minutes to the meeting point. It is the same bus suggested by the local team, bus 20.

If driving, the venue is not far from the M25. Hence, it might take you a while to get there, but there will be a lot of fast motorway time. Fast on the way there, at least: on the way back you are quite likely to get stuck in traffic, a consistent feature of the London orbital during weekends.

As you enter the park, there is a free car park immediately off College Road. The team recommends to start using that car park until it fills up. It is 4/5 minutes walk away from the meeting point, where there will be another car park right by the meeting point. I arrived at 8:30 and parked at the one further out. At that time both car parks were roughly half empty, so it looks like people arrive and pick either without much thought.

If you park at the one closer to the entrance of the park like me, you will be able to see a cluster of building not far into the park. Walk in that direction and will soon see other parkrunners and the meeting point not far from them.

Leavesden Country parkrun: start and briefings

The event meeting point is not far from a central cluster with a large cafe, a visitor centre and a substantial children’s play area. The single public toilet stall is at the end of a little square in the centre of these buildings. Leaving the buildings behind you, head into the fields and along a fenced off area. That’s where you will find the official meeting points and all the volunteers.

Maybe because of the weather, this was one of those parkrundays when most people arrived at 8:55. It looked like a small, intimate field until it was nearly time to go, when a good number of people eventually arrived.

I might have missed it, but I think a First Timers Briefing was not held at the event I visited. Just before 9am, the event director took a visible position by the fence and started asking the group about milestones, new joiners and tourists, so I assume I did not miss a dedicated briefing.

The briefing was fairly quick and efficient and then everyone started walking towards the start point, about 100m away in the middle of the field. There isn’t an obvious start line on the ground, but the RD made sure the messy bunch of parkrunners lined up along an imaginary line along a few small shrubs.

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

Leavesden Country parkrun course review – star ratings

Leavesden parkrun course review – route highlights

There were 129 parkrunners on the day of my visit to Leavesden Country parkrun. A good number considering their average field size and recent excesses of rain in the South East. There was a lot of noise about overcrowding when this event started, also with hints at locals complaining about the car park being swarmed by parkrunners. It’s a long time ago now, and I am glad to see the event has prospered and there is no hint of overcrowding. 129 parkrunners was a good showing for Leavesden Country parkrun, with winter numbers usually around 70-80 and good weather numbers usually around 120-150. So we good a spring field in January, nice! I think the venue could support slightly higher numbers. But not a huge increase because of the counterflow segments on relatively narrow paths.

Congestion was never an issue on this course. The start line is wide open in the middle of the fields. When you enter the orchard section, the path becomes narrower, but it is always wide enough to overtake. On the way back, it becomes double flow for a short while and there it will be on the tight side. There are no bottlenecks or issues to be careful about along the course, except seasonal ones. It was quite wet and while the course was not too muddy, it was definitely very slippery, especially at the end of one of the short downhills.

And this is where talking about surface becomes important. In theory, this is a mixed course, with grass around the two large meadow segments and tarmac in the orchard. However, the latter will be the main surprise. The grass segments were relatively manageable, even after a lot of rain. However, most of the tarmac paths are covered by a good amount of debris that gets very slippery. I could not find my trail shoes in the morning and decided not to invest the few further minutes needed to find them. I definitely should have. Wear trail shoes if you come here, unless it is late spring or summer.

Elevation-wise, at 53m elevation gain over 3 laps, Leavesden Country parkrun is very mildly undulating. While there is a bit of recurring up and down along the whole course, most of the elevation change is concentrated in two spots, with relatively light uphill and fairly steep downhills. They would be a pleasure to run down on, if it were not for the slippery mud and stones. If wet, caution is advised..

In terms of course layout, a segment on the side of the fields connects to a figure 8 loop you will have to run 3 times. Then you run back up the connecting segment.

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

After walking towards the start line from the briefing area, everybody turns around facing the meeting point again. When it’s time, a wide start on grass gets everybody going towards the fence by the meeting point again. It’s well beaten ground, low grass and not a lot of mud. Once you reach the fence, turn right and follow it to the hedge of the field, where you will turn left again twice. Now you will be running the long side of the fields and turn left again to head towards the orchard.

This last turn was very muddy, but it eventually got everyone onto a tarmac path. The first segment is still part of the initial part of the course that won’t be repeated as a loop and it is flat and in decent conditions. At the end of it, time to head downhill slightly and turn 90-degrees left. You have now entered the figure-8 loop. This portion will be on narrow(ish) paths where 2 people can run comfortably and one can squeeze by to overtake. It is mildly undulating, but not taxing. The first big reaches a 180-degrees wide turn pretty soon. This turn is also on a slight downward slope and fairly muddy, so when getting there in a big group, it was quite slippery.

You are not on a long straight with a few twists and turns that will last for I guess about 500m. It’s nice, all under the trees. At the end, a gentle right turn gets you onto a gentle upward slope. At the top of the slope, turn hard left and it’s now time to enter the other part of the figure 8. This time mostly on open ground and running on the side of green fields. The first part is a downward slope on very muddy and irregular grounds. I was trying to find less muddy grassy verges, but many people were doing the same thing. At the bottom corner, turn 90-degrees right and you are again running on a straight by the side of a field. At the end, climb a short incline, cross a line of big trees and enter another field.

You will now run 3-sides of a square field. It’s all flat and terrain was decent. At the end of the third side, climb a bit leaning left and you are again at the intersection point where you had first entered the second portion of the figure-8 loop. Turn left and enter the loop again, heading towards the intersection where you had entered the loop itself. The path is shared by runners heading in both directions for this 50-100m segment.

Once you reach the second intersection, keep going and do it all again twice more. Once you reach this point the third time, turn left and run the initial segment a second time in the opposite direction.

At the end, the finish funnel will be waiting for you.

Congratulations on completing Leavesden Country parkrun!

Facilities at Leavesden Country parkrun

There seems a lot to do around the park and the central hub where the event starts is quite nicely laid out, with a small central square offering a good number of picnic tables and benches.

At the end of this little square, you will find a single toilet stall shared by men and women. It’s perfectly clean, but as it’s only one, bear in mind a queue might form.

The cafe seems to have a window open on the front, but the main entrance is from the square. It offers a decent selection of savoury sandwiches and a good spread of sweet pastries.

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 Leavesden Country parkrun, I ordered a blood orange soda, an apricot danish and an espresso. This cost me £7.75, on the expensive side considering what it was.

Leavesden Country 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

Leavesden Country parkrun has established itself as a nice local event with an average field size. Terrain was hard to run on, but probably it was mostly because I did not wear trail shoes. I enjoyed myself: the park is nice and the cafe is great. I would be interested in coming back with good weather!

Finally, obviously, thank you, Leavesden Country parkrun team for your hospitality!