Aldenham parkrun - event 347

On the 1st July 2023 I ran the Aldenham parkrun which was the 347th event held at the venue, my 137th parkrun and 66th different course I'd attended.

There are not many parkruns that start with the letter A, and having already visited Ashford, I had the choice of Ally Pally or Aldenham in which to complete the 'Namely' challenge - yet another arbitrary parkrun community challenge. This one a simple exercise of running a parkrun for every letter of your name.

Luckily for me, my name is short and contains enough of the common letters to make the challenge a straight-forward one. Others have much more work to do, poor Christine Kowazki should she exist!

Aldenham it was then, chosen to tie in with another Prime Number and the relative ease of access. Around the M25 and south down the A1 towards Elstree and Borehamwood. Elstree of course famous for its television studios and home of the EastEnders television set.

In fact, driving to the event from coming of the main motorway routes were rows and rows of palatial houses and very beautiful looking homes. I'm assuming that they are owned by people related to the television industry or even footballers from some of North Londons Premier League clubs. Either way, it was nice to see how the other half live!

The parkrun event is held at Aldenham Country Park which consists of a reservoir surrounded by woodland and parkland. The country park itself has an impressive range of facilities ranging from an adventure playground, a farm and glamping tents.

The course itself takes place around two clockwise laps of the reservoir and each lap is slightly different with the first being slightly longer and takes a more scenic route around the water.

It is a trail course, which on my visit was mainly dry although the weeks thunderstorms had left some small areas a little spongy underfoot but road shoes would have been more than adequate.

Starting from the northern end of the park, the start takes you along the edge of the car park before turning right onto the first of the courses two memorable features. Participants run along the top of a concrete dam that is dead straight and paved with tarmac. Not especially high, but being a couple of meters up you are afforded views all across the reservoir and can see the full circumference of the route ahead.

Once you've successfully crossed the dam the path changes to rough gravel and begins to meander it's way all around the water. The route for majority of it's distance has good tree cover, and in some places too much as it turns to single file and you have to dodge brambles and other prickly bits as nature attempts to take over.

As the first lap makes its way around heading deeper into the woodland you reach the first marshall point at 3/4s distance. On the first lap your are advised to turn right and second time you turn left. The first lap takes you deeper into the woods where the path is bare and in winter will be a likely mudfest! The path swings around the hug the edge of the reservoir before coming out of the bushes and back out onto the carpark for the start of the second lap.

Once you've retraced your steps around the reservoir once more and reached the marshall and turned left, you reach the second memorable feature of the course. Turning the bend it's like you've entered into a road tunnel, except the tunnel is made up of an avenue of trees. Again it's single file and being small I was fortunate I didn't need to stoop. But with the light trying to break through the leaves it was an incredibly atmospheric and unique feature which I've not seen at another parkrun course before.

After you leave the avenue of trees your come out at the carpark and it's a short sprint finish to the finish line.

I finished in 47th place out of a field of 87 participants in a time of 28:05.