Parkrun tourism: The Lost Gardens of Heligan parkrun

My husband, younger son and I recently did some parkrun tourism at The Lost Gardens of Heligan parkrun in Cornwall. The Lost Gardens of Heligan is a fairly new parkrun, which started on 17th January, 2026. There aren’t many parkruns in Cornwall and my family and I are working our way through them – we’ve previously run Eden Project (twice), Lanhydrock, Land’s End and Heartlands.

The Lost Gardens of Heligan is a tourist attraction close to St Austell and Mevagissey, which sounded like a very scenic location for a parkrun. It is also a one-lap course, which is pretty rare. The parkrun website described it as having ‘a downhill section and an uphill section towards the finish’. That made it sound like the sections were quite short. Not that they were pretty much the entire route!

I looked at the results on the website and thought there was an outside chance I could get first lady. I hadn’t realised exactly what those times were masking in terms of the difficulty of the course.

We ran The Lost Gardens of Heligan parkrun on a horrendous day at the start of June – heavy rain, ridiculously strong winds and very cold. I’d packed for June weather, so was just wearing a vest. Everyone else had two layers and long sleeves on!

We parked in The Lost Gardens of Heligan car park and paid for parking with an app. Then we walked to find the toilets, which were nearby. Because of the strong winds, I’d checked Facebook to make sure it was actually on. It seemed very quiet when we arrived and another tourist (because obviously pretty much everyone is a tourist in Cornwall) asked us if it was on.

We found a few volunteers hanging out indoors in a shop and cafe area. The Lost Gardens of Heligan puts on a special parkrun breakfast after the run, but we didn’t partake because we don’t do parkrun breakfast! We always just eat a normal breakfast beforehand, but I know for a lot of people having a big breakfast afterwards is part of the experience.

We followed the run director down to the start line, where he just did one briefing, rather than a first timers’ briefing and a main briefing. He told us this is a ‘keep right’ course, whereas most are apparently keep left. I didn’t realise that, because our home course is keep right. The run director celebrated the woman running her 500th, the man running his last parkrun in the South West (who was also doing his 699th) and the man getting married. He warned us about ‘lumps and bumps’ on the course and told us to run through the stream, not to attempt to cross the slate thing which appears to be a bridge.

As always with a small parkrun, I started near the front. I overtook one lady immediately, so there was just one in front of me. She took off pretty quickly, so I thought ‘no chance’. We were going downhill and it was steep! The ground was muddy and covered in massive puddles and tree roots. The website had suggested the course was ‘mostly compacted gravel’, which sounded like a road shoes course. After all the rain, we should definitely have worn trail shoes.

We kept on going downhill, watching our footing very carefully. I maintained the gap between myself and the lady in front. Then my son overtook me and we sort of ran alongside each other for a couple of minutes. Then there was a silly noise, as my husband flew between us both and sprinted down the hill.

I overtook them both soon after.

At about a mile, we saw the stream mentioned in the briefing. To be honest, it was smaller than the puddles we’d been running through. And then we were going uphill. And the lady at the front wasn’t so good at going uphill. So I overtook her. I looked behind me and it wasn’t long until I lost her.

At a couple of points, I passed the runners going in the other direction.

The course was very well marked and marshalled – credit to the volunteers who had done the set-up too with lots of cones and arrows to stop us going the wrong way. (I regularly do set-up at our home course, so I know what a big job it is.) But there were still one or two points where I lost sight of the two men in front of me and questioned if I was going the right way.

After nearly a mile of running uphill, annoyingly we had to run downhill again. So obviously that meant more uphill! It was exhausting. I walked twice on the worst hills – obviously checking first that nobody was going to overtake me.

I was closing in on the man in front of me. I overtook him, then started closing in on the next man. As we approached the finish line, we both got confused. There was a very small out and back, where we weren’t sure what we were supposed to be doing, but the marshal waved to us. I overtook him just before the finish line, then another man came out of the blue and overtook me.

I crossed the line in 11th place overall and first lady in a not-very-good time of 25:44 – actually the slowest first female finisher to date. But I had given it my all, with my heart rate hitting 180.

The lady who had been first was nowhere to be seen. In fact, she ended up being third lady. My son and husband finished a few places behind me.

The Lost Gardens of Heligan is a beautiful place and, under normal circumstances, we would have like to stay and have a look around. But this really wasn’t the day for it!

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 when we are on holiday or need to be somewhere other than our local park at 9am on a Saturday. But we also like to go somewhere different just for fun every now and then. Some people do challenges with their parkrun tourism, which are on the parkrun app. I’ve never bothered with these, but my friend Joy aka Pink Oddy is a fan.