Quakers Walk parkrun

On the second heatwave parkrunday in a row, I visited Quakers Walk parkrun for the first time. I had had this visit in my planner for a while: I needed a Q for my second alphabet and this specific parkrunday would also tick a prime number event. Birds, stones, something like that.

The main driver was clearly the Q. I had been eyeing at this event for a while, since it is also new enough to provide low event numbers for the Golden Wilson Index, but I missed that window. My visit was on event #137: the long morning drive ended up pushing my visit that far out, even if Quakers Walk parkrun had been on my target list since they started in late 2023. But the Q provided an irresistible pull, so eventually I had to give in and wake up at 5am on a Saturday. Reasonable, right? I can recover on a work day, parkrunday does and should take priority.

Qs are a rare commodity in Southern England. My only Q before visiting Quakers Walk parkrun had been Queen Elizabeth parkrun, down on the way to Portsmouth. I thought it was far from home back then, lol. How could I imagine my cultish parkrun obsession would get this bad. Will I seek help or eventually travel to Lincoln to get that elusive Y that I still miss to complete my second alphabet? I guess anyone reading this site can probably guess the most likely answer. Just not sure how long it will take me to accept the wake up time that comes with a 3h drive. For a 5K. And maybe a couple of pics of a nice cathedral. Yes, that makes it totally justifiable!

I will also have to come back towards Quakers Walk parkrun, though. I checked my Voronoi map and after visiting Victoria Park parkrun, Newbury a few weeks ago, I only miss a couple of events to connect Devizes to London. Only a monster could go on with his life without filling those empty Voronoi polygons, clearly.

More on challenges later, but one unexpected thing is worth saying. Quakers Walk parkrun brought me an unexpected gift: I completed the Stopwatch Bingo challenge after 241 events! Someone geeked out even more than I do and run the math on parkrun bingo. Apparently, statistically you should get there around event 300, so I was luckier than most. Let’s take the win.

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

Trip to Quakers Walk parkrun and parking

Quakers Walk parkrun is in Devizes, Wiltshire. A charming market town in the middle of a beautiful rural region about 1h East of Bristol and 2h West of London. It dates back to the establishment of a substantial Norman castle and it retains a charming, individual market town vibe, I did not spend too much time exploring, but it definitely seems to be a town worth spending a day in, if you have time for it. It is also about 20 minutes drive away from Stonehenge, if you want go give a look to a very ancient finish funnel.

If you want to reach the event by public transport and look at the official event site, you are in for a bad surprise. Quoting the team, Devizes does not have a train station and local bus timetables are not conducive to reach the location in time for its 9am start. I struggle to take things at face value, so I checked Google Maps and, apparently, you could reach Quakers Walk parkrun using public transport. If you are crazy enough, that is. I checked routes from London, but given interchanges, it should work from other parts of the country too.

Google maps suggests leaving Wimbledon around 5am, to get the 6am GWR to Penzance. No need to go all the way to Cornwall, though. Alight after 1h in Swindon and take bus 49. In 1h that should get you to the ‘Police Hq’ bus stop in Devizes, which is about 10 minutes walk away from Quakers Walk parkrun meeting point. Sounds like there is a lot that could go wrong with this route and you should spend the whole week before offering blood sacrifices to the public transport gods, but it looks like there could be ways. Just check yourself in advance and have plan B options in mind.

If you are driving, your approach will obviously depend on where you are coming from. From South West London, it took me about 2 hours to drive there. Once out of the M25, it was a pleasant early morning drive on the M3 all the way to the Andover area. From there, I transitioned to local roads. They are small, turny and up and down rolling hills. This part of the trip took about 40 minutes, but slowing down was compensated by a really beautiful scenery from all sides.

Once you reach Devizes, the recommended car park is the one of the Sports Centre 10 minutes walk away from Quakers Walk parkrun meeting point. This one is free, but you are asked to vacate before 11am, so not a whole day place if you are planning to explore a bit. A paid for car park is also available by Devizes Wharf, and this is also closer to the meeting point and town centre.

Quakers Walk parkrun: start and briefings

If you came by car and left it at the Sports Club as recommended on the official course site, leave it from the gate you entered and turn right. Cross a little bridge on the Avon canal and go down the steps immediately after. Get on the riverside path and walk about 5 minutes up to the next bridge. Cross that bridge again and you will be facing the gate to Quakers Walk. Get into the tree covered path and after a couple of minutes you will reach a point where the pop up sign has been set up. And a ‘Start’ sign.

And this is where confusion started. Barely anyone was there and several people were walking the path going further up, so I followed. They were heading for an opening about 300m away, so I followed. However, they eventually turned around and started coming back. So I stopped in confusion and, eventually, started going back again. Until I spotted a volunteer who cleared the confusion for me: the official meeting point is on the clearing 300m up! But it is only for the First Timers Briefing, the finish funnel and the bag drop. If you don’t need any of those, you can wait by the start line. It was confusing.

I eventually walked to the clearing and reached it just in time to join the First Timers briefing. It is held on a field in front of the finish funnel and it is quick, comprehensive and friendly. Afterwards, everybody starts walking back to the start line. There wasn’t an announcement, just people got moving, so I assumed, correctly, the Main Briefing would not happen there.

Once on the start line, the ED walked to slightly elevated ground by the path and gave the briefing. Hearing her was not difficult, in the path enclosed by tall trees on both sides. Everyone was already where they had to be for the run when 9am came.

Here it was. 3, 2, 1.

Time to go!

Quakers Walk parkrun course review – star ratings

Quakers Walk parkrun course review – route highlights

There were 190 parkrunners on the day of my visit to Quakers Walk parkrun. Looking at historical attendance levels, Quakers Walk parkrun can be quite volatile. Pretty randomly, you see back to back events with even 30% difference and it does not seem to show a clear pattern. That said, it is pretty consistently in a 140-200 range, with a few outliers in the mid 200s. It is not the easiest to reach, so maybe that limits local and long distance touristing to reasonable levels. At 190, however, the event feels busy and buzzing without becoming overwhelming, so I think this is right about the sweet spot. There are 2-way segments and even those are manageable, with paths wide enough to allow overtaking even there.

There aren’t any bottlenecks on the course, per se. However, there are areas where the path narrows and some very tight corners. The first narrowing happens just after you pass by the finish funnel and start running by the front of the residential development. Here, you might have to be conscious about your position when overtaking or if some faster runners are lapping you towards the end. Then there is tight turn at the end of this segment, leading back onto the long tree-covered path. And finally, the out and back turnaround point around a cone is very tight. Pretty much walking distance tight. It’s not a hard course, but probably not a PB course either because of these features.

Surface is quite consistent. The portion running in front of the housing development is on good, flat tarmac, while the long tree-covered straight is on hard, well compacted paths. Road shoes were perfectly fine on the day I visited. I suspect there might be some mud and puddles during winter, but it I doubt it will be as bad as other venues.

Elevation-wise, at 23m elevation gain over 3 laps, this should be seen as a flat course. But it’s not, really. The first half of all laps is a gentle uphill, while the return straight starts as a noticeable downhill and ends as a light downhill. I did not really suffer the uphill, but the first downhill segment is noticeable and a definite performance enhancer.

In terms of scenic value, the tree covered path is beautiful, but that’s really all there is here. Quakers Walk parkrun is a nice, enjoyable local event and it can be a destination event because of the Q. But it’s not a scenic destination, nor one with a particularly interesting course.

The course is designed as a squished P. One long straight and a diversion to the right at the top. You run up to the beginning of the diversion, turn right into it and then run up to the top where you reconnect to the the long straight. Then you run it all in the opposite direction and turn around around a cone. And do it all agin twice more.

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

As you start, the path is all dedicated to runners going North, so you have a lot of room to spread out. No congestion at all around the start line, overtaking is fairly easy. The path is a pleasure to run on and surroundings are beautiful, green and as fresh as they can be during a heath wave. It’s about 300/350 metres of this, straight, slight, barely noticeable uphill. Then you reach the right turn into the clearing with the finish funnel.

Turn right on a short ramp. And run around short semi-circle by the finish funnel before turning left and start going by a series of houses. You are now running on great tarmac, still on a very slight uphill. Here the path is narrower and not completely straight anymore: a bit of light turns left and right keep things interesting. Half way through this segment you pass a clearing on your left and you can see runners coming back under the trees on the other side. Eventually, you come to another wide left turn. Pass by a cute wooden bench and then take a hard left turn. You are now back on the long, tree-covered straight.

This is a long straight, all under tree cover, all the way back to the start. The first part is on a noticeable downhill, until you reach the turn into the funnel clearing. Pass that and start sharing the path with faster runners coming back in the opposite direction. After that point, you will still be on a downhill, but it more gentle and less noticeable. It won’t be long before you reach the start line area again. Keep going a few seconds and the cone will be waiting for you. A slow 180-turn around it and you are heading back in the other direction, towards the funnel turn again.

Do this all 3 times, including the cone turnaround point. And keep going after that, because you need to reach the finish funnel in the clearing. After the last right turn, the funnel will be there, waiting for you on grass not more than 20/30 metres away.

Congratulations on completing Quakers Walk parkrun!

Facilities at Quakers Walk parkrun

There are no facilities available to parkrunners at the car park and nothing around the meeting point or the start line either. By the meeting point/finish funnel there is a small children play area, but it might be dedicated to the residential development in the area.

The recommended cafe and toilets are in the Kennet and Avon Canal Trust builiding. This is 5 minutes walk alone the canal side path, in the opposite direction from where you came from when coming from the car park. And in front of the Wharf public car park, so if you plan to use this cafe, parking there is not free, but definitely more convenient.

The cafe itself was more of a club room then a cafe, with fairly limited choice. I did not stop there so I cannot comment on quality and cost. Staff looked friendly from outside, though.

Quakers Walk 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 enjoyed my visit to Quakers Walk parkrun. It is not a breathtaking venue, nor it has sweeping vistas or an elaborate course, but it is set in a nice environment, it is an enjoyable run and people are extremely friendly and welcoming.

If you don’t need a Q there might be more interesting venues that are also easier to reach, but if you are local or if you are chasing a Q, Quakers Walk parkrun is definitely a great option for your parkrunday morning.

Finally, obviously, thank you, Quakers Walk parkrun team for your hospitality!