Our Fave North London Places to Run, Cycle & Walk, brought to you in partnership with Apple Watch.
Spending the summer much closer to home, rather than jetting off on a carefree holiday, may not be what we had planned for 2020 but when you’ve got the whole of London on your doorstep, it’s not actually a bad thing at all. Even the weather is playing ball (well mostly). We’re spending the summer exploring all of the parts of the city we don’t visit often enough, and we’re wearing Apple Watch to really make the most of it – we don’t go anywhere without music playing and even Londoners need directions sometimes!
WALK | HAMPSTEAD HEATH
The Heath is the place we head for when we feel like we need to escape the city as it’s got enough space for us to really stretch our legs. We like doing a loop – the Compass on Apple Watch helps us get our bearings – that starts at Parliament Hill Lido and goes up to the viewpoint so we can get snaps of that epic view over London on our iPhone 11 Pro, and take a moment to breathe and be mindful with the Breathe app on Apple Watch. We then head all the way to Kenwood House, before walking down the other side, and finishing at The Spaniards Inn.
RUN | WOODBERRY WETLANDS & CLISSOLD PARK
Woodberry Wetlands and Clissold Park are two of the reasons we love Stokey – both are home to plenty of wildlife (Clissold has deer you know!) so we can perfect our David Attenborough impressions and when we combine the two into one run, we can rack up a pretty good distance. We’re not training for anything specific but we do like keeping track of our activity and the Workout app captures absolutely everything from time, distance, and heart rate to cadence and elevation. The pace alerts give us that extra bit of motivation and the display is always on so we don’t even have to break our stride to see how we’re doing – that’s definitely helped to knock our PB down. We always clock our heart rate hitting the bank going up Queen Elizabeth Walk as it definitely takes it out of us sprinting up there.
CYCLE | PARKLAND WALK
This 4.5 mile stretch between Finsbury Park and Alexandra Palace is a local nature reserve, and it’s one of our favourite green spaces in the city as it still has that hidden feeling. It follows the route of an old railway line, which is mostly demolished save for a few parts that can be seen through the trees, making it a pretty straightforward cycle and a great way to close our Activity Rings. We love matching our music to our surroundings which is why our playlists are always a bit tongue in cheek! We don’t even have to break concentration to get Apple Music going as we simply lift our wrist and request the artist or track we want using Siri.
Apple Watch Series 5 is available from apple.com, starting at £399.