Parkrun tourism: Trentham Gardens parkrun

My husband and I recently did some parkrun tourism at Trentham Gardens. Trentham Gardens is a popular park and visitor attraction in Stoke-on-Trent.

Parkrun tourism is when you run at a parkrun other than your regular, home parkrun. Some people do it all the time and some people never do it. Some people do it to complete various challenges. I love parkrun tourism, but generally we only do it when we need to be somewhere away from home at 9am on Saturday mornings.

Trentham Gardens is a stunning parkrun. For me, it was second only to Eden Project parkrun in its beauty. The course takes in the natural beauty of a vast number of trees, combined with the man-made beauty of a stunning park, which was planted up with an array of colourful flowers when we ran it in August.

I snapped a couple of pictures of the view from the start line. They in no way do it justice!

There is absolutely loads of free parking at Trentham Gardens, for the gardens and the shopping village there. You are advised to use the main car park to the left, not the one next to Trentham Garden Centre. There are also lots of toilets in the shopping village – I think I spotted three separate toilet blocks.

The parkrun is about a five minute walk from the car park (as long as you don’t park right at the top end!). You access the parkrun across a footbridge near the garden centre, rather than through the main entrance to the park.

Trentham Gardens parkrun has a lot of runners. There were 580 when we did it, which was actually slightly lower than usual. Unsurprisingly, with it being so scenic, there was lots of tourists there. It’s also a fairly new parkrun. We took part in week 73, which means it was started after the long parkrun Covid break (70 weeks from March 2020 to July 2021).

At the start line, which is on a fairly narrow path curving around a patch of grass, approximate finish times are marked out. These go from 23, through 26 and 28, through the 30s and right up to 55. I lined up by the 23, as my finish time usually starts with a 23. The run started more suddenly than I’m used to and I was caught up in a crowd of people running much slower than I normally run. I hadn’t realised how narrow and congested it was until I started running and tried to get through the crowds!

The path soon widens out and runs along the length of the lake and around the bottom end of the lake, over a small bridge and past a rowing club. By this point, you’ve already done 1.5 miles and it’s all pretty easy. Then you get hit with a double whammy of the course heading uphill and the surface becoming more uneven.

The path heads uphill for about half a mile through fairly dense trees. It’s not very steep, but it’s steep enough to be tiring (and I did see a lot of the slower runners walking up it later on). This is followed by a nice downhill for about a quarter of a mile. It’s not so steep you worry that you’re going to lose your footing, but it’s steep enough to pick up the pace, which is always good! The course flattens out a bit and then heads gradually downhill again, heading round the bottom of the lake and into the Italian Gardens. The last half a kilometre is through the beautiful Italian Gardens, which are laid out in a very ornamental style. The path is entirely gravel, which could get a bit slippy. Then it’s round the bend to the finish line!

For me, Trentham Gardens wasn’t a particularly quick run. I finished in 23:46 and was 8th female, out of 251 females and 580 runners.

At the end of the parkrun, you have to leave the gardens (unless you pay). Charges apply for the gardens, but Trentham Estate makes it available to runners for the purpose of the parkrun.

As ever with parkrun tourism, make sure to check Trentham Gardens’ website and Facebook page before you travel there to ensure it is actually on. I know that it was cancelled the week after we were there for an event.