Sizewell parkrun - event 318

On the 3rd January 2025 I ran the Sizewell parkrun which was the 318th event held at the venue, my 270th parkrun and 185th different course I'd attended.

After revisiting Dartford Heath on New Year's Day I was keen to get back on the tourist trail and continue with my Saturday morning adventures. Foordy had joined me for two of the last three parkrun days and being back from injury I think he's secretly got the bug back again. So when he called me and said he wanted to buy a pair of shoes and needed to pick them up in Bury St Edmunds I knew there was an opportunity to be had.

I might just add a caveat here, and state that this is typical random Foordy behaviour and my eyebrows would have been raised had I had this conversation with someone else.

Bury St Edmunds does of course have its own parkrun event, and the sensible thing would have been to visit the parkrun in town and pop to whichever shop we needed to afterwards to pick up the aforementioned shoes. But that was too easy and the Bury St Edmunds course was too plain by comparison. For example, it doesnt have a nuclear power station.

I'd been wanting to visit Sizewell parkrun ever seen I watched a YouTube video, read a blog or a social media post. Whichever medium sold me the idea of running alongside a beach with the north sea on one side of the path and a nuclear power station on the other. I was even more determined when my brother-in-law and niece visited in one of last years school holidays and gave me that awful feeling of FOMO.

So a plan was hatched. Up ridiculously early, over to Sizewell to do the parkrun and then home afterwards along the scenic route via Bury St Edmunds.

We arrived to beautiful sunshine, perfect beach weather. Although it was absolutely freezing cold and much of the UK was under snow or having it threatened against them. We hadn't seen any snow so far that morning and there was always the worry of plummeting temperatures meaning unsafe conditions and cancellations.

But having done my research, Sizewell is made of former stuff. Perhaps the nuclear reactor leaves an invisible green glow around itself and keeps the parkrun course well protected. Either way, the scenery, the water and the power station elevated on the coastline was just how I had hoped it would be and I took a ridiculous number of photos to remind myself of the occasion.

From the start, the course is and out-and-back which has had to be recently modified on account of the Sizewell C project which is aiming at increasing the size of the power station and is one of the largest infrastructure projects in the UK.

This does mean however, that not only has the course been modified to divert around the building work, but the event now has a very industrialised feel in the central part of the course with cranes and building activities a blot on the landscape.

The course heads north, whilst technically on the beach it's based on reasonably firm paths that are untouched by the sea, unless of course for inclemental weather. The sea is on your right and the power station on the left with the distinctive dome of the reactor drawing the eyes.

Once past the building area where you run along a temporary elevated path above the sea the course cuts back inland again and takes in a section along natural wild lands. 

It was here that we finally met the snow that the rest of the UK has been experiencing. If the first half of the course hadn't already felt atmospheric and slightly dystopian the second part certainly did. Gone were the bright skies and sunshine and replaced with grey clouds and snowflakes.

Still suffering from my cough/chest infection I wasn't chasing times or performance. So I slowed down to a walk here, to take a few photos and to enjoy that eerie otherworldly sensation that I'd not felt since a trip to China in 2019.

After navigating the turnaround and reaching the building works again the snow stopped, the clouds had gone and the sunshine returned. The sea was breaking waves - this time over the left shoulder and a freezing cold but gentle wind was blowing in the face.

I finished in 84th place out of a field of 113 participants in a time of 32:30.

Getting up early and travelling distances for parkrun isn't for everyone and people raise their eyebrows sometimes when I tell them what I get up to. But this event was well worth the effort it took to get there.

Having had a great morning we headed over to Bury St Edmunds where Foordy picked up his shoes. We stopped and had a quick pint in a pub called The Nutshell, which claims to be the smallest pub in Britain.

If that wasn't enough, we stopped off at a local butchers on a recommendation from a guy in the pub, stocked up on sausage rolls, scotch eggs and Suffolk sausages which were not only great value but incredible produce

All in all, it was a great parkrun day and set a very high bar for 2026!