Parkrun tourism: Berkeley Green parkrun

Recently, my husband, parents, sister, brother-in-law, niece, nephew and I did some parkrun tourism at Berkeley Green parkrun. Berkeley is a small town close to the River Severn in the very south of Gloucestershire. We’d heard Berkeley Green was a fast course. In fact my eldest had run the fastest time of anyone in our family ever there a few weeks previously.

Berkeley Green parkrun is a two-lap course based on the Berkeley Science & Technology Park, in the shadow of the former nuclear power station, which makes for an impressive sight.

The information online said to leave the M5 at junction 14. This would probably be best if you were coming from the south. But we were coming from the north of Gloucestershire and Google Maps recommended leaving the motorway at junction 13.

There is plenty of free parking on site. The car park is at the centre of the course, so you need to be parked by 8:50am and you can’t leave until the tail walker has passed for the final lap. We finished pretty quickly and left pretty quickly and this didn’t cause us a problem.

There are no toilets at Berkeley Green parkrun! Information online says the nearest toilets are in Berkeley town centre – about 1.5 miles away, but we didn’t see any. Dogs are welcome at Berkeley Green, but we chose not to take Hetty as we wanted to run fast.

The briefing takes place outside the doors to SGS Berkeley Green UTC (college). We were told the first timers’ briefing was just for actual first timers to parkrun, not for tourists. The main briefing was loud and clear and we heard important messages about keep left and overtake on the right and also to run on the left side of the cones when you’re on the road, then run back along the path. But we didn’t get an explanation of the actual course, which would have been helpful.

I knew that the previous week the first lady was a bit slower than me, so I thought I needed to have a go at coming first. The previous week, my sister could easily have been third lady. So my sister and brother-in-law could have a go at running fast, my niece and nephew stuck with my parents. (My niece is 12, so is allowed to run or walk on her own, but she likes to walk round chatting with my mum.)

My husband and I lined up right at the front of the pack. Without the crowds I’m used to, I shot off like a rocket and was in the leading pack in about fifth or sixth place and definitely first lady. I felt really strong for about a quarter of a mile, then I realised I’d gone way too fast and couldn’t sustain it. The course winds around the technology park, then loops round a big car park. There are two very short climbs on the course, which are completely balanced out by short downhills.

I’d only run about a third of a mile when a lady overtook me. Then she overtook my husband and various other men. I didn’t see her for dust. And I suspected she was significantly older than me!

I’d assumed/ hoped that it would be a scenic course, but it wasn’t. At no point did we go near the river. It was essentially running round car parks. But we went along on a nice, sunny day and it really was a fast course.

At one point fairly early on, there were crowds of people running towards me and I couldn’t see where I was supposed to be going. The pack in front of me was sparse and there weren’t enough marshals or arrows – or they were hidden behind the people heading in the other direction. Luckily, I caught sight of my husband and managed to follow him. He had also got slightly lost at this point.

I ran my first mile in 6:40. To put that into perspective, I ran a mile race in 6:36 last year (and that ranked me 26th nationally for my age category in 2024).

Then there was a loop of a car park and we were onto the road. This was the bit I recognised from the briefing where you had to stay to the left of the cones. This turned out to be a fairly short out and back. At the end there was a marshal, some bagpipe music coming out of a speaker and a 180 degree turn. This is where you needed to run on the path to avoid the people heading the other way.  Then we were running towards the finish line, ready to do the second lap.

It was remarkable how quickly the first lap went and remarkable how quickly the second lap went too! As I headed for the finish line on my final lap, I was passing people on the path who were still on their first lap. But the course was never crowded. As I ran towards the finish line, I was feeling absolutely exhausted. But I thought there was a chance I could get  PB.

I crossed the world’s tiniest finish line in 21:24 – not a PB, but only six seconds slower than my PB, which I got at Marine Parade last year, then repeated four weeks later at Severn Bridge. In fact, my watch said I’d run a 5k PB in 21:01 and the course was actually 3.16 miles long (5k should be 3.1 miles).

But I’d given it my all and I was very happy with my time. I was second lady. The lady who’d beaten me by a minute and a half was was in the 55-59 age category! My sister wasn’t third lady, but she was very happy with a big PB – going below 24 minutes for the first time ever.

The whole family enjoyed their trip to Berkeley Green parkrun.

Parkrun tourism is when you run at a parkrun other than your regular (‘home’) parkrun. Some people do it every week. Some people never do it. We mainly do it out of necessity – when we need to be somewhere other than our local park at 9am on a Saturday – but we like to go somewhere different for the fun of it from time to time. Some people do challenges with their parkrun tourism. I’ve never bothered with these, but my friend Joy aka Pink Oddy is a fan.

We’re slowly working our way through the Gloucestershire parkruns. I haven’t blogged about all of them, but we’ve now done: Berkeley Green, Cheltenham, Cirencester, Forest of Dean, Gloucester City, Gloucester North, King George V Playing Field (Cheltenham), Lydney, Mallards Pike, Newent, Stonehouse, Stratford Park (Stroud), Tewkesbury.