Crystal Palace Park Run, London (2.9 km)
A circular run through Crystal Palace Park in south London — 2.9 km past the Victorian dinosaurs and the National Sports Centre, climbing about 40 metres.
· 2 min read
Crystal Palace Park stands high over south London, and running a lap of it climbs about 40 metres without ever getting steep. This 2.9 km run passes the Victorian dinosaurs, the National Sports Centre and Joseph Paxton’s terraces. Crystal Palace Park is hillier than Danson Park and shorter than Greenwich Park.
The Crystal Palace Park loop
Crystal Palace Park works clockwise or anticlockwise; these notes go anticlockwise, starting from the station.
Route
England - London - Crystal Palace Park
- Distance
- 2.9 km
- Ascent
- 43 m
- Max altitude
- 93 m
Works in Komoot, AllTrails, Garmin & most hiking apps.
- Start and finish: Crystal Palace station, on the western side of the park
- Distance: About 2.9 km (1.8 miles)
- Ascent: Roughly 40 metres, almost all of it in one climb
- Terrain: Paved and compacted gravel, nothing technical
Navigation costs nothing: the wide main paths carry the run round.
The Victorian dinosaurs and the terraces
The run starts beside the National Sports Centre, so the athletics stadium goes by in the first quarter kilometre — Grade II* listed concrete, opened in 1964. Around 500 metres in, the path drops to the Lower Lake, where the prehistoric animals stand on islands. Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins made them for the park and they were unveiled in 1854, the first life-sized models of extinct animals ever built. Only a few of them are dinosaurs, and Victorian palaeontology got their shapes badly wrong.
Past the lake Crystal Palace Park bottoms out at its south-eastern corner, then climbs for a kilometre up the eastern side to the high ground at the north end. The way back runs along Grand Centre Walk, below the Italian Terraces. Joseph Paxton laid those out below the palace itself; the palace burned down on 30 November 1936 and the terraces are what survived it.
Running it
The climb starts a kilometre in and lasts a kilometre, steady enough throughout that it never breaks your stride. What follows is not a fast descent. Crystal Palace Park hands the height back so gradually that the last kilometre reads as flat, and the run ends on the level it started on.
One lap is barely a run. Three make nearly 9 km with the climb landing in the same place each time, which is what Crystal Palace Park is good for.
Three car parks open off Thicket Road, Anerley Hill and Crystal Palace Park Road, all of them charged.
References
- Crystal Palace Park Trust — the park’s history
- Crystal Palace Dinosaurs — Crystal Palace Park Trust page
- Crystal Palace Park — things to see and do
- Crystal Palace Park — getting here and parking
- Crystal Palace National Sports Centre — Greater London Authority programme
- Crystal Palace Park — London Borough of Bromley regeneration
- What are the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs — Friends of Crystal Palace Dinosaurs guide
- Crystal Palace Park — Parks and Gardens site record