Our favorite North London places to run, bike and walk, presented in partnership with Apple Watch.
Spending the summer much closer to home, rather than going on a carefree vacation, may not be what we planned for 2020, but when you have all of London on your doorstep, it isn't. at all a bad thing. Even time plays ball (well above all). We spend the summer exploring all the parts of the city that we don't visit often enough, and we wear the Apple Watch to really make the most of it - we don't go anywhere without playing music and even them. Londoners need directions sometimes!
WALK | HAMPSTEAD HEATH
The Heath is where we head to when we feel like getting away from the city as there is enough space so we can really stretch our legs. We like to do a loop - the compass on Apple Watch helps us get our bearings - that starts at Parliament Hill Lido and goes up to the lookout point so we can get shots of this epic view of London on our iPhone 11 Pro, and take a moment to breathe and pay attention with the Breathe app on Apple Watch. We then head to Kenwood House, before descending on the other side and ending at The Spaniards Inn.
RUN | WETLANDS AND CLISSOLD PARK
Woodberry Wetlands and Clissold Park are two of the reasons we love Stokey - both are home to abundant wildlife (Clissold has deer, you know!) So we can perfect our impressions of David Attenborough and when we combine the two into one race, we can accumulate over a fairly good distance. We don't train for anything specific, but we like to keep track of our activity and the Workout app captures absolutely everything from time, distance and heart rate to cadence and altitude. The pace alerts give us a bit more motivation and the display is always on so we don't even have to interrupt our stride to see how we're doing - it certainly helped reverse our PB. We always time our heart rate on the bank that goes up Queen Elizabeth Walk, because it keeps us from sprinting up there.
CYCLE | WALK THROUGH THE PARK
This 4.5 mile stretch between Finsbury Park and Alexandra Palace is a local nature reserve, and it's one of our favorite green spaces in the city because it still has that hidden feeling. It follows the route of an old railroad track, which is mostly demolished except for a few parts visible through the trees, making it a fairly straightforward cycle and a great way to close our activity rings. . We love to match our music to our surroundings, which is why our playlists are always a bit ironic! We don't even need to break our focus to launch Apple Music, as we just lift our wrist and ask the artist or track we want to use Siri.
Apple Watch Series 5 is available on apple.com, from £ 399.
