This was an interesting area – true “inner city” woodland, with several burnt out cars, wrecked motorbikes and event a burnt-out van at various points on the course. The area itself was suprisingly hilly too – 260m for a 5.9km course in SE England is pretty impressive – more so as this is inner city London. There is indeed an abbey in the woods too – just some ruined walls now, but a nice spot, surrounded by concrete housing estates…
My biggest mistake was on the approach to No. 8 – I dropped down an unmarked path above the control, a little early, and after thrashing around in the dark green, had to drop down, then around, then back up. But 8 to 9 was a superb leg, lovely and fast.
To sum up the area, there were some really nice pockets – one lovely section with no undergrowth and large trees was the very nicest of forest; but also too much green, and too many roads slicing up the area, to give a great run. But it was an unexpected challenge and quite unlike any other London park I’ve run in so far…
One look at the climbs on the course and I switched from Brown to Blue – I did the 5.9km/260m course in 53:13 (9.0 mins/km.) I finished a pleasing 4th out of 30 runners – the winner took 50:51.
One reply on “Lesnes Abbey Woods and Bostall Heath DFOK District Event, 2 October”
Ran there last year, agree with your opinion on the place. I remember there were some nice bits over to the east of the map, and that middle bit of the extract above, but most was quite horrible and there was no other option but to take the paths. wasn’t helped be the map being a bit out in more than one place and some dubious planning – hiding controls behind unmarked holly bushes… Had the option of going again this year but chose to avoid it.