Beardmore, Greenfield, Hogarth Parks

Run time: 37:39
Distance covered: 4.03 miles (6.49km)
Soundtrack: Surviving, Jimmy Eat World
Conditions: heat



This is the first run since I was in Corfu last year where I've wished I was carrying a water bottle. Actually hot. One of my idiosyncrasies is I think of winter temperatures in Celsius and summer in Fahrenheit, and today definitely felt like 80°.

Today I was mopping up the last few eastern parks as lockdown eases up. It's been getting busier in the parks for a few weeks, but the social distancing seemed to have gone out of the window today, possibly due to the Cummings Effect.


I started off at Beardmore Park, which is one of those new parks that's basically just the disused space in the intersection between two diagonal roads which has been landscaped. It's nicely done for this sort of thing, with a playpark and a couple of interesting features.



Small, but it makes good use of the space. I left Beardmore and ran along Old Shettleston Road, heading to Greenfield Park. This is one of the parks that doesn't show up on Google, directing you to the care home instead, but it's a nice park. Opened in 1958, apparently, and I guess it was designed with the housing estates around it. It's striking how many parks there are in this square mile actually: Hogarth, Tollcross, Cranhill and Alexandra Parks are all in easy walking distance. They don't build this much green space into new developments these days, private or social.

It's mostly green space and trees, with hardly any of the space covered by footpaths. Good one for socially distanced picnicking.






After Greenfield, it was a long slog through the estates and up to Carntyne Road, where we find Hogarth Park. 



I always Google the parks after I've run in them and often, you get news articles about various crimes that have taken place in the park. Hogarth is the first one to feature a headless body. Also a 'large scale youth disturbance' last week.

Thankfully this was a quiet afternoon in Hogarth. Like a lot of east end parks, it's a little neglected, with some interesting features like this kind of... gathering place? Which has seats looks like it might have been some kind of sport arena. I'm betting this is where the youth disturbances happen though.


I ran up to the top of the park where the A8 cuts this off and stops it from turning into Alexandra Park, and then back down to the western exit.


This stone pyramid was a cool and unexplained feature.

After that, I ran down to Duke Street and along past Parkhead Forge, eventually completing the loop.


The temperature made it a challenging run, but as always the journey into the relative unknown made the going easier than it could have been. 

Three more parks done, and the east is pretty much complete. On upcoming runs, I'll be taking advantage of lockdown easing to venture further to the north and west...




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