So I arrived at the stunning location of Foots Cray Meadows, Sidcup that is the largest green open space in the London Borough of Bexley at 97 hectares!

Meadows History

Foots Cray Meadows was originally part of Foots Cray Place estate with the country house built-in 1757 but sadly demolished after a fire in 1949.

So in 1778 Thomas Coventry inherited the estate and commissioned the world-renowned landscape gardener Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown in 1780 to design a beautiful parkland and woodland landscape, making the most of the River Cray by widening it out into a ribbon shaped lake and you cross over it by the now famous five arch bridge!!!

This is why I love parkrun so much with the delight of running in some of the most beautiful parks the UK has to offer, 9am every Saturday morning is an adventure and a delight for this tired sole, I love parkrun!!!!

Always a pleasure to meet up with very good tourist friend in Matthew Wateridge (picture below left) and Matthew I am looking forward to seeing you all again on our 26th January 2018 reunion meet up at your home parkrun of The War Memorial Park, Basingstoke.

Course

This is an out and back course that start is near the children’s playground, then you head off to complete dual clockwise loops, the first is the larger one and the second is almost half its size. Once you have finished the second loop it is a run back to the finish funnel that is next to the start!

The running surface this mainly a mixture of grass and trail paths and there is a pronounced steady incline on the larger loop towards Rectory Lane!

Points to note

• Definitely after prolonged rain a trail shoes course
• Surprising number of hallows on the course that can collect mud and water

I would say this is a beautiful course that is perfect if you are training for or just love running cross-country!!

Facilities

There is free parking at Kelsey’s Farm Shop Sat Nav DA14 5ET that is a 10 min walk from the start of the parkrun. The toilets at the shop are also open before the start of the event that is always welcome to us tourists and shower facilities at £1 for 10 mins!

For the post run coffee we retired to Kelsey’s Farm Café, which was a treat for a hungry park runner and they had a great menu to select from 🙂 Remember on presentation of your parkrun barcode you get 10% off your bill, nice touch 🙂

While there I had to buy some fresh produce from the farm shop afterwards and all I am going to say is every item that I purchased was delicious 🙂

Final Verdict

I would like to thank Rob O’Halloran and his team of volunteers for making us all feel extremely welcome and it is hard to believe that you have been only going as an event since July, well done guys!!!!

So if you ever wanted to run around a beautiful landscape originally designed by Capability Brown then Foots Cray Meadows has to be high on your parkrun tourist list, shear heaven!!!!!

What next for me is just a little matter of regaining my Greater London parkrun region status at Catford next week that will be 53 events completed, looking forward to it 🙂

Best

Mark aka Silent Runner