Wake up to Wakehurst - Wakehurst parkrun #95 - 14/03/26
- aqasanu
- 49 minutes ago
- 3 min read
I’m a firm believer in New Year's resolutions and setting goals for the year, broken down into quarters across the 8 areas of my life. It’s a process I’ve been doing for several years with amazing results. Despite my meticulous planning, this year I’ve found it hard to get going. The theft of my phone, the frozen shoulder, the death of my aunt, and not attending the funeral have left me stuck in neutral. Add in wars I don’t understand, Ofsted at work last week, and relentless gloomy weather, and I’ve been struggling. I needed something to lift the funk I was in, and this week at Wakehurst parkrun, I think I found it.
Selected and arranged by my parkrun tourism besties, I set off with my wife and daughter at 0632 for a combination of buses and trains to reach Wakehurst, in West Sussex, near Haywood Heath. The morning air was crisp with a pale sun climbing into a cloudless sky, signalling a distinct break from long weeks of bleakness. Today felt like the arrival of spring.
Wakehurst, previously known as Wakehurst House, is a 490-acre County House Estate. Built in 1590, it is now owned by the National Trust. The house is a perfectly maintained Grade 1 listed Elizabethan mansion. It is home to Kew's Millennium Seed Bank, the most biodiverse place on the planet and managed by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. With walled and water gardens, ponds, ancient woodlands, meadows and wetland conservation areas. This place is unequivocally a national treasure. Click here to see for yourself.
Getting off the bus, we entered the estate through a wooden gateway. It felt like entering Narnia from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. A winding path threaded through the tree-filled estate with carpets of wild flowers opening out to rolling landscapes and far-off woods. The scale of Wakehurst is impressive; it was like we’d entered another world.
The path took us to The Mansion and two of the largest living redwoods in the UK, standing at 37m! Volunteers were teaming around to be joined by 397 participants for today’s event.
With the new runners welcome completed, we walked a very short distance to the Stables Kitchen from where the event started. The course is two clockwise laps on wide, resin- and buggy-friendly tarmac, surrounding the Elizabethan mansion and the thoroughly beautiful botanical gardens, lit up by the now-bright sun. There is 70m of elevation on the course, which reveals new landscapes and hidden garden gems, a celebration for the eyes. Running here felt like pressing pause on the busy parts of life, replaced by a calming, quiet beauty.
With our run completed, we went to the Stables Kitchen, with its locally sourced produce and plush indoor and outdoor seating. It was the perfect place to do some parkrun faffing, swap stories, upload results and refuel. With large windows, you can soak up the spring views all around.
This had been the restorative outing I needed to clear the fog from the beginning of the year. If you’re looking for a parkrun that combines history, conservation, and wide-open natural beauty, Wakehurst is hard to beat. Wake up to Wakehurst.
Happy running, walking, or volunteering.
You can read about how parkrun was created by the founder, Paul Sinton-Hewitt, a care leaver, in his book ‘One Small Step’, The Definitive Account of how a run became a Global Movement by clicking here.
Beautiful account and encouraging me to visit Wakehurst again after a long time.