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This Week's Walks - Archive

Please see the Saturday Walker's Club This Week's Walks page.

This is an archive of walks done by the Saturday Walker's Club. You should only need to use this page if the SWC website is down.

Tuesday, 6 May 2025

Bluebells in the Evening: Wanstead Park

Length: 6.0 km (3.7 mi)
Net Walking Time: 1 ½ hrs

Meet: Wanstead Station, at 18.45 hours. Wanstead is a station on the Hainault loop of the Central Line in Zone 4. Travel time from Oxford Circus is 27 minutes, and from Liverpool Street 17 minutes.

Leafy stroll in the Borough of Redbridge through the Grade II* listed historic landscaped parkland of Wanstead Park, once home to the Palladian mansion of Wanstead House, compared at the time to Blenheim Palace. Today only two smaller structures, The Grotto and The Temple, remain (and the House itself stood on what is now a golf course), but nevertheless the present smaller park retains some of the layout of Wanstead House’s grounds, especially its many ponds, and provides a perfect venue for relaxing and escaping the urban sprawl, with its plentiful water features and varied woods, famous for their bluebell displays in season.
The park closes ‘at dusk’.

Eat/Drink: Plenty of options near the station. See webpage for details.

For walk directions, map, photos, and gpx/kml files click here. T=short.11

1 comment:

Thomas G said...

Just n=3 today on a w=cold-but-dry evening.
Fine dry paths and spring-ey woods made for a fine stroll at good pace and 80 minutes later we were back at Wanstead Station, having done a few extra loops through Chalet Wood, where the bluebells are. Plentiful they were but a bit dried out and - under the grey skies - a tad darkish blue. Destination then: The Cuckfield, as per usual.