Bushy Park parkrun, 24th January 2026
Cate Walker reports from the home of parkrun:
“I had been wanting to do Bushy parkrun for a long time (for obvious reasons), and had come close on a number of occasions. When I spotted the chance to combine it with a theatre trip to Wimbledon, I jumped at the chance. Laurie was kind enough to indulge me by doing it a second time.
It was a beautiful winter’s day, the sky perfectly matching our Claremont t-shirts. I didn’t really have a sense of just how many were there until we were all lined up across a very wide start line, but I became very aware of it as the almost 1,500 runners proceeded to funnel from this wide range onto a standard sized path as set out. You really had to concentrate to not trip over anyone!
It took about 1.5k for me to feel I could run at the pace I wanted, and even then I spent a lot of the course spotting gaps and getting myself into them. I was hoping to get in just under 25 mins, but realised after 3k that 24 might be a possibility. In the end, we crossed the line at 24:02, 303rd and 304th respectively, and I was pleased to later find I was in the top 50 women finishers.
The funnel was very well organised, as three ‘lanes’ of runners were alternated between in being sent over to the scanners. Earlier on, in the course briefing we’d been told to expect to be in the funnel for up to 10 mins, but it was more like 3-4.
I’d definitely recommend Bushy for anyone who can get down to that part of London. It’s not the most convenient of the London parkruns of course, but it’s a lovely expansive park, a nice, no-repeat course, very well organised, and of course, something of a pilgrimage for us committed parkrunners. Well worth the wait!”
