Aberfields parkrun review: course, parking and the climb

I've run Aberfields parkrun once, on a wet August bank holiday Saturday, as a Zone 1 recovery run in 25:49, and it was the usual lapped course rather than the alternative.

It's a free weekly 5k on the fields at Nantymoel, and a quicker course than a valley setting suggests: a lapped circuit round the rugby pitch with a long out and back hung off the middle of it.

The course

The start is 9:00am every Saturday at Aberfields, Nant-Y-Moel, CF32 7SL, and it costs nothing beyond the one-off registration.

The circuit round the rugby pitch is 800 metres. You run one and a half laps of it, peel off for a long out and back, then come back for another one and a half. Counting is easier than that sounds, because the out and back splits the laps into two halves for you.

All tarmac. The course page describes it as mainly tarmac with a short gravel section approaching the finish funnel, though what I ran was tarmac start to finish, and there were puddles, as the page warns there will be after rain. The out and back is the rough bit, uneven underfoot in a way the laps round the pitch are not.

52 metres of elevation, and you feel it on the out and back rather than on the laps. The drag up to the turnaround is long rather than steep, which is the kind that gets you if you treat the first half as flat.

Road shoes are probably fine here all year round. I wore trail shoes on a wet day and was more comfortable for it, not because tarmac needs lugs but because the uneven sections and standing water are less bother in something with grip. Wet day, I'd wear the same again. Dry, road shoes and no further thought.

Pacing

The start is narrow, but it isn't busy, and if you do end up too far back you can run down the grass alongside the path to get past.

Pace it as two courses. Hold something back through the opening lap and a half, push up the out section of the out and back, and take the return as free speed. I ran even splits to that plan and wouldn't change it.

PB potential

Not a PB course, with the turns and the undulations, but a quick one. Reckon on 30 to 45 seconds slower than a perfectly flat course on the same fitness. A good one for a tempo run, though - the climb is sustained enough to work on and the run back to the field is quick enough to finish hard.

The course records when I visited were 16:17 for men and 17:52 for women.

The fields are small: I was one of 47 runners on a morning where the weather had probably kept the numbers down. The event has run since August 2023 and it appears to be Ogmore Phoenix Runners' event in everything but name; the club formed in 2012 a few hundred metres from the start line and accounts for more than a quarter of all finishes recorded here. You notice it on the day. Phoenix vests everywhere, and volunteers who were cheerful in miserable weather.

Parking

Park in the marked car park by the pitches on Aber Road, CF32 7SR. It has painted bays, it is free, and it is a walk through to the start. About 30 spaces at a guess, and roughly 10 cars in it when we got there.

That figure says more about the rain than about a normal Saturday. On a dry summer morning, or with a game on the rugby pitch, I would expect it to fill. The event's own directions send drivers to CF32 7RP on Wyndham Street and to the roadside stretch just past the Wyndham Arms, a long run of road with space right beside the field, and there is plenty of kerb on Aber Road too. The parkrun page warns about parking, but on the day it was the easiest part of the morning.

There is a bus from Bridgend, though we drove.

The Ogmore Valley Trail after parkrun

The out and back runs along the Ogmore Valley Trail, part of the National Cycle Network, and the parkrun sits near its northern end. The whole thing is 12 km of traffic-free path, which I'd love to try one day - I've only run the stretch the parkrun itself uses.

It climbs steadily from south to north, about 1.5% on average. From Aberfields that means anything you add goes downhill first and comes back up, so decide how far out you are going before you set off rather than at the point you turn round.

Afterwards

There's no obvious cafe by the finish. The team's pages say they head somewhere local for one every week, but never name it, and I was soaked through enough that I drove straight back to Cardiff rather than find out.

If you have children with you, there are skate parks and a children's playground 5-10 minutes' walk from the start. And if the weather is better than mine was, Ogmore-by-Sea is half an hour's drive from the finish and worth the detour.

Extra information

• Dogs. Allowed.
• Buggies. A few out on the day, and hard work on the uphill drags, where there are tree roots underfoot.
• Toilets. In the pavilion by the start, and the course page says they close once the event has finished, so use them before you run.
• Baggage. I would expect you can leave it in the pavilion, but I didn't test it. The Facebook page is active and easy to message.

Nearby parkruns

Maesteg is the closest at roughly 9 km, then Aberdare at about 13 km and Pontypridd at about 14 km, so Aberfields fits easily into a morning if you are working through the south Wales events. If you are travelling further in, the Cardiff parkruns guide covers the city's events course by course. Whichever you pick, bring your barcode - no barcode, no time.