By Hayden Shearman (This post was originally published on the Get Active London blog.)

London has more green space than any other city on the planet. I learnt this the hard way when setting out to write a book about its top running spots—the book soon grew and grew because there were just so many incredible places to run. 

The following top-10 list could have included all the well-publicished central running havens (like Hyde, St James's, Regent's and Victoria Parks) and the mega parks out west (Bushy and Richmond) but chances are you already know about them and one of the things I love about running is the ability to explore new environments. So what lesser known parks should all Londoners explore?

Well, here is my top 10. I could have easily have made this list a top-40 rather than top-10, but these 10 will get you started and I'm sure make you hungry to explore more of London's hidden treasures.

Note: We've included the list below, but to read a full description of each park read the Get Active London blog. 

1. RUISLIP WOODS
Location: Ruislip (16.7mi NW of central London) 
Perimeter Distance: 9.0mi (when combined with Park, Copse, Mad Bess and Bayhurst Woods)

2. HOME PARK
Location: Kingston Upon Thames (11.8mi SW of central London)
Perimeter Distance: 5mi

3. HORNCHURCH COUNTRY PARK
Location: Hornchurch (15.8mi E of central London)
Perimeter Distance: 2.5mi

4. WIMBLEDON COMMON
Location: Wimbledon (8.1mi southwest of central London)
Perimeter Distance: 7.8mi

5. HAMPSTEAD HEATH
Location: Highgate (4.6mi N of central London)
Perimeter Distance: 8.0mi

6. GREENWICH PARK
Location: Greenwich (6.7mi SE of central London)
Perimeter Distance: 2mi (around Greenwich Park only)

7. CRYSTAL PALACE PARK
Location: Crystal Palace (7mi S of central London)
Perimeter Distance: 2.05mi

8. FRYENT COUNTRY PARK
Location: Kingsbury (9.1mi NW of central London)
Perimeter Distance: 2.3mi

9. DANSON PARK
Location: Bexleyheath (11.7mi southeast of central London)
Perimeter Distance: 2.4mi

10. QUEEN ELIZABETH OLYMPIC PARK 
Location: Stratford (5.8mi NE of central London)
Perimeter Distance: 3.6mi (following the art trail starting and finishing at Westfield) 

Hayden Shearman is the author of the new book Runner's Guide to London, which is the ultimate companion for exploring the runner's playground that is London (features over 120 London running routes and parks). www.runnersguidetolondon.co.uk

By Paul Browning // Cemeteries may seem odd places to run—and the relatively bleak regimented lines of modern cemeteries are probably places to avoid—but many of London’s Victorian cemeteries make ideal locations: peaceful, off-road running, with an incredible range of flora and fauna.

Southeast London has two fantastic examples: Nunhead and Brockley & Ladywell. 

Nunhead is one of London’s Magnificent Seven, nothing to do with the classic 1960s Western with Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen, but the series of large Victorian Cemeteries created in the 1840s around the, then, periphery of London, as the city’s churchyards became full.  

Nunhead was sadly neglected and closed for decades by its private owners before being restored by Southwark Council with Heritage Lottery funding and re-opened in 2001.  It is a lovely mixture of heavily over-grown, quite formal and some fantastic vistas, such as this one of St Paul’s Cathedral.

The excellent Go Feet Blog has already suggested a running route around Nunhead so I will cover its younger sibling.

Brockely and Ladywell was originally two cemeteries that opened in 1858 within a month or two of each other. Serving two neighbouring local authorities, they were originally separated by a wall and became a single unit after WWII. There are around 17,000 graves there.

When I run at Brockley and Ladywell I rarely have a route in my mind, I just ‘drift’ and see where my feet take me, pausing to either try to find a particular grave or to look at an inscription.

If you want a structured run around the cemetery, I would start with a 1.2 mile loop that largely follows the perimeter. There are clear paths for most of this except needing to cross a grassed area close to Ivy Road where the original boundary wall between the two cemeteries lay. Towards the end of the loop, at the top of a path coming in from your right, is the Hillier family tomb—one of those buried there was George Lacy Hillier who was for a time the fastest British amateur cyclist. 

Follow the main ‘road’ back into the cemetery, keeping slightly to the right of the ‘cross of sacrifice’ WWI memorial to another low walled WWI memorial around some carefully manicured grass—somewhere I always pause.  It includes the names of Alfred Figes (who served as William Word) and may well have been the oldest WWI soldier, and Charles Cox, an Army Cyclist, whom I wrote about in Running Past.

You could then pass the grave of decadent poet Ernest Dowson, who once observed that "absinthe makes the tart grow fonder." Close by, and often masked by long grass in summer is the grave of the Cuban anarchist and writer, Fernando Tarrida del Mármol.  After running through a wooded area you will see a clearing which has a tall column and an almost cherubic figure on top, you’ll need to be careful going across the graves to get there.  It is a memorial to Jane Clouson who was brutally murdered in Eltham in 1871.  It was a story I wrote about a few months ago in Running Past.

After a visit to the Brockely WWI memorial, which is just beyond the Clouson Memorial, slightly retrace your steps and head back towards the start.  You will have covered around a couple of miles in total. If you want to extend your run there are plenty of more paths in the cemetery or a couple of excellent local parks (Hilly Fields and Ladywell Fields).  If you want a longer run, Nunhead Cemetery is just over a mile away to the west.

The same route is never the same run; a path that can seem bleak in the winter, may have naturalised flowers climbing and tumbling over graves in the summer, a golden carpet of fallen leaves in the autumn that requires a little more care when running or have a mass of croci in the spring. 

A few words of warning though, don’t let your running intrude on the grief or remembrance of others, always give funerals a wide berth and try to do the same with those visiting graves of loved ones. 

GETTING THERE
Nearest Stations: Crofton Park about 5 minutes walk away from the Brockley Road entrance, Brockley is about 10 minutes from the same entrance, and Ladywell Stations is about 10 minutes walk from the Ladywell Road entrance. 

Buses: The buses convenient for the Brockley Road entrance are: 122, 171, 172; P4 and 122 with a short from Prendergast School down St Cyprians Passage and then left along Ivy Road) are those best for the Ladywell Road gate.
Car: There is limited parking at the Ladywell Road entrance – the postcode for satnavs is SE13 7HY.

OPENING HOURS
March to October: 10am–4.30 pm daily
November to February: 10am–3.30pm daily

FINDING OUT MORE
If you want to find out more about London cemeteries a great place to start is one of my favourite blogs, Flickering Lamps. As for Ladywell and Brockley, their ‘Friends’ have an excellent website, as do Nunhead’s Friends.

By Simon Cook // 17:00 – Southbank. Among the tourists, street-food munchers, and leisurely strollers, I spy the first of them. They look familiar yet somehow different. More purposeful, I wonder.

This trickle soon turns to a stream with the collective mass more easily carving a route through the crowd. Growing still, now a torrent. For almost an hour the Thames Path becomes swamped by trainer-clad, backpack-laden, GPS-tracked, fluorescent, sweaty, speedy people making their way home from a day at the office. 

These people are run-commuters. 

By all accounts, run-commuting is on the up: The number of people choosing their trainers over other modes of transport is increasing, media coverage is becoming more regular; political lobbying is swelling, and run-commuters are becoming more visible on the streets of our town and cities.

London, however, seems to be the centre of it all; forging the way for the rest of the world.

I am fascinated by why this is. There are no formal policies or strategies in place to explicitly encourage people to run to/from work, yet they are out there in their droves. London is also the site of Home Run London (the world’s first cycle-escort service for run-commuters) and the base for the run2work campaign (who are supported by the London Evening Standard). In many ways, London is the global trailblazer for run-commuting.

To explain why I am so fascinated by this, perhaps a little context.

I am a geographer based at Royal Holloway, University of London, researching all manner of running geographies. Currently, I am undertaking a three-year project into run-commuting and running’s potential as a transport mode.

Place is a major concept in geography and I was first posed the question of ‘why London?’ by a journalist. Ever since, I’ve been trying to come up with a satisfactory answer. It’s obviously a slippery-coming-together of many processes and qualities, but there do seem to be things in London’s make-up that especially promote run-commuting. In particular, there are a set of personal, cultural and geographical motives that I wish to suggest are important in understanding ‘why London?’.

Firstly, personal. Individuals most often take up run-commuting as a time-saving mechanism. The amount of mileage required in many training programmes can be difficult to fit into a normal week. Equally, other factors, such as having young children, may mean completing training runs in the evening is difficult or undesirable.

Run-commuting therefore allows people to harmonise the rhythms of life, work and training by utilising moments when they must travel to fit in running at the same time. Such time-constraints are exacerbated in London, with cultures of long working hours and above-average commuting durations—making run-commuting even more appealing.

Equally, run-commuters can be encouraged to take up the practice from a dislike for other transport modes. In general, London’s transport network is head and shoulders above anything else found in the country but it is certainly not without its issues. Some people much prefer the reliability, freedom and space afforded by donning their trainers over congested and temperamental public transport.

Secondly, culture. There are some broad cultural tastes that exist in London which makes run-commuting acceptable and attractive. Most obviously, there is the strong desire for a shift away from car-based transport and for people to lead healthier lifestyles.

Active commuting achieves both these aims and has witnessed a strong growth in recent years. This is most notable in cycling commuting, but all forms of active commuting help to establish a cultural environment where run-commuting can flourish. It makes lycra and sweaty bodies acceptable in the workplace, and has also encouraged the installation of many facilities (showers, lockers etc.) in workplaces that run-commuters require and can benefit from.

Lastly, geography. Urban form has a large role to play in creating runnable cities and dense urban areas offer the most enticing spaces for run-commuting. Central London’s density means that destinations are often not too distant from one another and can be traversed by running; and the street layout can allow for many (and sometimes quicker) routes to be carved through it.

Contrastingly, regular congestion makes road-based traffic slow and tedious; and subterranean transport is often hot, hurried, and squished. Under these conditions, run-commuting can be quite appealing.

Add into the mix the transport patterns that already exist in London, and reasons why it is such a hotbed for run-commuting become apparent. Huge swathes of London’s workforce arrive at one of London’s eight mainline train stations with the need to complete the last leg of their journey. The average distance to any Zone 1 train station from these is just 2.3 miles—a very runnable distance.

So next time you spot a trainer-clad, backpack-laden, GPS-tracked, fluorescent, sweaty, speedy person making their way home from a day at the office, applaud them and the city for being at the forefront of a global movement.

By Bethan Taylor // I remember the first time I ran down the Southbank. It had taken all my courage to step out of the suburbs and take to the streets with the ‘real’ runners. 

Terrified I’d be found out as a fraud, those first steps were slow and tentative. But I kept going and the city rewarded me. As my feet landed, a rush of fresh, crisp air hit my face, and a view of St Paul’s came in to sight, lit up in the night, decoupaged on the skyline in a way that makes me gasp even today. 

My bravery had been rewarded, London had scooped me up and held me close as it whispered in my ear the city is yours.

Being granted the key to the city is the most magical thing. Suddenly running becomes full of promise, expectation and anticipation. You realise you can run for miles without crossing the same street twice, neighbourhoods open up and the city simultaneously shrinks and expands before your very eyes. 

A canal can guide you from rough industrial heartland to genteel stucco, past giraffes and monkeys, hip cafes and bookshops on boats, all in a matter of miles. A river takes you on a loping tour through naval history, past soaring skyscrapers and seats of power before dipping in to muddy trails before your legs are worn. Where else can you go from dodging wildlife to running past Prada in a matter of miles. 

Whatever your mood, the city knows which run will be the perfect antidote. No landscape remains the same and no matter how often you run the same route there’s always a moment to take and savour. It warms me to the core.

There have been so many occasions when London has been unbelievably kind to me, picking me up when I’ve fallen, holding my hand as I wobbled towards bigger and scarier challenges. The city has led me to new friends and rejuvenated connections that were nearly lost. When my breath has caught in my chest it’s given me a moment to recover, and when I’ve been too tired and stiff to run it’s carried me. It’s both my bodyguard and number one fan as I run, persuading me I can take on anything and supporting me on my journey. Without that generosity, that openness and love I wouldn’t be the runner I am today. 

Thank you London.