On a bitterly cold day in Southgate, North London I now completely realise what a great community spirit there is in every parkrun even! Today 160 runners braving the conditions as the most important thing it’s Saturday 9am parkrun time!

For the record Grovelands is a beautiful park that is Grade II listed as a historical park and was designed by the famous landscape gardener Humphry Repton it will be great to see how it looks in the summer, I am sure it would be breathtaking!

Course

The course is almost 3 laps of the parameter of the park that is run normally entirely on tarmac. Today quite rightly for runners safety we were asked to run next to the path on the grass as parts of the course was still very icy. So today it was a cross-country parkrun of sorts!

For the record there is a pronounced rise on the back part of the course raising up to 45 metres!

Personal Stats

Time for me at the moment is just getting round with this chest infection 36:51

Important info

Firstly there is free 2 hours restricted on street parking at the following postcode N14 6QX that is near to the start of the parkrun! There is a public toilets just in from the Broadwalk entrance of the park!

The thing that surprised me was the Cafe in the park does not open to 10:30am according to the local which is a crying shame as they will have great business from the parkrun community after the run!

Other points of interest includes

• Beautiful gardens
• 9 hole pitch & put golf course
• Football pitches
• Tennis & Basketball courts
• Boating lake where fishing is allowed
• Grade I listed mansion that now is a private hospital

Final Verdict

I would like to commend John Curran and his team for working tirelessly in making sure this event happened today in very tricky conditions!

On a personal note it was a very lovely touch in being given the honour to start today’s event. Thank you guys!!

Finally this is a beautiful park to visit, explore and the parkrun is fun testing course to run, thoroughly recommend!

Run on 14/01/2017