Always great to be back in the capital with today’s event located at Southall, West London.

Southall Park History

This park has a very interesting history where once the Merrick family owned a house, they call Southall Haw that later become known as Southall Park.

Then in 1839 it changed from a privately owned house to an asylum until 1883 when it was burnt down to the ground.

Finally. from 1910 onwards the council took control of the park and have been making improvements ever since for the benefit of the local community to relax and enjoy in. Link

It was lovely chatting into fellow tourist Amanda & Bill from Wanstead and it’s always a great pleasure in mine being accompanied by my best buddy Martin 🙂

Course

The course starts with a small loop back, then you run three fairly flat clockwise laps of the perimeter of Southall Park that’s running surface is mainly made up of a tarmac footpath, and a small section of Hoggin path.

On the final lap, you turn off onto a short grass section to where the finish funnel awaits.

• There are a couple of places where the tree roots have slightly lifted the tarmac path that you have to be aware of
• The course is a bit narrow around the short hoggin section that could cause a pinch point for overtaking, but to be fair the field of runner is very stretched out when you reach this point.

So in summary, this is a very fast course if you’re looking for a time on the day. I was very happy just been able to run a parkrun without stopping for the first time after contracting covid just before Christmas, time 35:31

Facilities

As stated on their parkrun event website, there are no toilet facilities in this park.

Travelling by Car

There is limited permitted parking around Southall Park, but you need to be gone before 10 am.

There is no parking restrictions though on Green Drive postcode UB1 3AZ. I would get there early though as when I was doing my recce around the park at 8:30am there seemed to be no spaces available!

By Train

For me, it was a no brainer as ever since it’s opened. I’ve wanted to travel on the Elizabeth line. It was very simple journey to make from where I live in Luton with just one change at Farringdon, then onto the Elizabeth line to get to Southall with the train station just a 15-minute walk away from the park.

Post Run Coffee

For the post run coffee, we went to a Chaiiwala restaurant on The Broadway postcode UB1 1QF for a lovely breakfast at as you could see, highly recommended.

Conclusion

I would like to thank this week run director, Pardip and his team for volunteers for making us feel extremely welcome on the morning.

I hope I have got this right Pardip told me he is going for a world half marathon fancy dress record dressed as a banana, brilliant stuff and all the best on this challenge sir 🙂

I don’t say this often, but this is one of the loveliest parkrun communities that I’ve ever had the fortune to visit and should be rightly applauded for the warmth of their welcome.

So, if you’re travelling to London, why not pop down to Southall parkrun for a flat fast course, supported by one of the friendliest communities in the country, a simple winning ingredient.

For me, I now have just three events left to do to get my LonDone status back and I’m really looking forward to my next capital adventure 🙂

Best

Mark aka Silent Runner