Hilly Fields 600th parkrun, 2025

Hilly Fields parkrun celebrated its 600th run today. Since the event started in 2012 nearly 16,000 different people have taken part at least once, and more than 1,000 people have volunteered to make it happen. The runners and walkers have notched up a combined distance of 607,020 km - all the way to the moon (384k) and most of the way back!

I started running there in 2013 and was there for their first birthday and their 100th run among other anniversaries. I have got to know lots of people, most of my contemporaries seeming to have gone through a similar trajectory - starting out and getting quicker and quicker, getting seriously into running and joining local club (Kent AC), taking part in lots of races from cross country to marathons, reaching a peak, running disrupted by Covid and then being injured. Most of us now seem to be have slowed back down and jog around Hilly Fields complaining about knees, ankles and other parts, but hey we're still going...

Still not everyone from my early days at Hilly Fields has slowed down - here's Olympian Alex Yee out front there in 2015 with me in the following group. Ten years later he's not doing badly is he?

Must admit I am not currently a regular a Hilly Fieldser as I have been in the past, but I have done 181 parkruns there as well as many other circuits in training. I know every divot in the course around the park and I would like to thank the trees along the way many of which I feel I know individually, including where to avoid their roots. On the Montague Avenue hill side of the park for instance there's a group of horse chestnut trees, currently in bloom, which cast a much needed shadow on one of the toughest parts of the course. Nearby there's a remarkable willow tree which split in a storm so that its main trunk is now horizontal - but still very much alive.  At the bottom of this hill there is a large London plane tree (I think) which marks the turning point on the winter course while another tree at the corner of Montague Avenue and Hilly Fields Crescent marks another turn.

What could the trees tell us about this place and its history? In his locally set novel 'Donkey Boy' (published in 1952 but set at turn of 20th century), author Henry Williamson refers to the 'socialist oak' on Hilly Fields where radical meetings were held, and indeed there was many such meetings at that time. On sunny days running up that big hill you can also see traces of the prefab houses built to replace housing destroyed in the second world war. And maybe one day future archaeologists will wonder about the origins of the compacted earth trackways around the park and their relationship to that mysterious stone circle...