Where to trail run near London without a car

The most common reason Londoners do not trail run is a belief that it requires a car. It does not. It requires a train ticket and a willingness to leave the house before ten.

These are places with genuine off-road running, reachable from a London terminus in roughly an hour or less, where the station is close enough to the trails that you can run from the platform.

Inside London

Hampstead Heath

Station: Hampstead Heath or Gospel Oak. The best hills in central London, 320 hectares, dirt paths and woodland. Muddy from November to March. Covered in more detail here: running on Hampstead Heath

Richmond Park

Station: Richmond. The largest Royal Park, deer, and enough interior to run for an hour off the surfaced path. The perimeter Tamsin Trail is just under twelve kilometres.

Wimbledon Common

Station: Wimbledon. Sandy singletrack, drains well in winter, quieter than Richmond and easier to get lost on.

Epping Forest

Station: Chingford, on the Liverpool Street line. The biggest of the lot by a distance, nearly 2,500 hectares running north east out of the city. Genuine forest, genuine navigation, and you can run for two hours without crossing your own path.

An hour out

Box Hill and the North Downs

Station: Box Hill and Westhumble, about fifty minutes from Waterloo. Chalk, woodland, real climbing, National Trust land. The closest thing to proper hill running you can reach on a day ticket. the full Box Hill guide

The Chilterns

Station: Wendover, from Marylebone. Beech woodland and chalk ridge, with the Ridgeway National Trail running through. Gentler than the North Downs and considerably emptier.

The South Downs

Station: Hassocks or Lewes, from Victoria or London Bridge. Open chalk downland with big views to the sea. The South Downs Way passes through both. Exposed, so check the wind before you commit to the ridge.

The Surrey Heaths

Station: Farnham or Brookwood, from Waterloo. Sandy heathland, pine, and a very different feel to the chalk. Drains superbly, which makes it a good winter option.

How to make it work

1. 1.Buy the return before you go, and check the last train back. Sunday engineering works have ruined more trail runs than weather has.
2. 2.Run a loop from the station rather than a point to point. Point to point sounds romantic and then you are standing on a rural platform for forty minutes.
3. 3.Carry more than you would in a park. There is no water fountain and no shop, and phone signal is patchy in the Chilterns and the North Downs.
4. 4.Download the map offline before you leave. Signal is the thing people assume will be fine and it is frequently not.
5. 5.Pick the pub first and route backwards from it. This is not a joke; it is the single best way to make the habit stick.

The bit that changes things

Doing this once a month does more for your hill fitness than any amount of treadmill incline, because the ground is uneven and the climbs are not uniform. It is also the cheapest way to find out whether you want to do something bigger.

Most people who end up on a mountain weekend started with a train ticket to Surrey.