Where to run
Running in London
London's running is held together by the royal parks, two towpaths and a river. It is a flat city with a few honest hills hiding at the edges, and it has more free organised running on a Saturday morning than anywhere else.
The ground
What running in London is actually like
The Thames valley floor is flat, and central London with it. The relief is on the rim: Hampstead Heath and Highgate to the north, where Parliament Hill stands at about ninety-eight metres over the whole skyline, and Greenwich to the south-east, where the park climbs sharply to the Royal Observatory.
South-west, Richmond Park is neither flat nor a park in the municipal sense. It is more than nine hundred hectares of rough grass and bracken with free-roaming red and fallow deer, and enough undulation to make a long run feel like one.
Between them, the parks and the towpaths link up well enough that a long run in London is mostly a matter of choosing which green thing to join next.
Routes
Runs worth knowing in London
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The Tamsin Trail, Richmond Park
The path around the perimeter of Richmond Park. Undulating, mostly unpaved, and the standard long run for the whole of south-west London. Deer have right of way and are genuinely to be kept away from during the autumn rut.
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Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens
The two run together as one open space. A loop taking in the Serpentine and the Long Water is the default central London session, and the Broad Walk gives you a straight line when you want one.
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Regent's Park and Primrose Hill
The Outer Circle is a road loop of roughly four and a third kilometres with softer paths inside it, and Primrose Hill sits just to the north for a short sharp climb and the postcard view back at the city.
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Hampstead Heath
The least tidy green space in London and the best for it. Trails, hills, woods and the swimming ponds, with Parliament Hill at the top. Genuinely muddy from October to March, so it is a trail shoe route in winter.
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The Thames Path
A national trail that runs straight through the city. The Putney to Hammersmith stretch on the south bank is rowing water and a favourite out and back; further east the path threads the Docklands and Greenwich.
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The Regent's Canal
Towpath from Little Venice through Camden, Islington and Hackney to Victoria Park and the Olympic Park at Stratford. Almost entirely traffic-free, and shared with cyclists and walkers, so it rewards patience more than pace.
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Greenwich Park
A hard climb from the National Maritime Museum up to the Royal Observatory, with the Isle of Dogs laid out below. Small enough to use as a hill session and beautiful enough to be worth the repeat.
Season
Mud, mild damp winters, and Saturday at nine
London is mild and wet rather than cold. Hard frost is occasional, snow is an event, and the real winter constraint is daylight rather than temperature. The trade-off is mud: the Heath, Richmond and Wimbledon Common are soft from October to March.
Summer is warm rather than hot, though the Underground makes the commute home worse than the run. Air quality along the main roads is a real consideration, and it is one more reason the parks and towpaths carry so much of the city's running.
The fixed points in the calendar are the London Marathon in April and, every single Saturday, parkrun. The first one was held in Bushy Park in 2004 and there are now dozens across the city: five kilometres, free, timed, and open to anyone who registers.
The app
How Waypath fits a London week
A catalogue that covers the UK
Waypath's trail data comes from OpenStreetMap, so British rights of way, footpaths and bridleways are already in it, along with condition reports left by whoever walked them last.
Conditions, dated
Trails carry reports from people who were just there: dry, muddy, flooded, overgrown or closed, with the day they saw it. In a London winter that is the single most useful field.
Share the run without sharing your address
A published route is trimmed at both ends, so a shared map never shows the door you left from.
Keep reading
More places, and how the app works
Run it, then share the link.
Free unlimited recording, a trail catalogue built from OpenStreetMap, and a live link anyone can open.
Requires iPhone. Recording activities is free, with no limit on how many.