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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.

Thursday 25 April 2024

Evening Walk - 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...

n=5 despite the wet weather forecast for the evening.
There had indeed been some rain earlier and the woods had that wonderful damp soil smell when we walked through them, but there was no mud and no new rain, although later we experienced w=a-little-spittle .
The lake in the park initially seemed very silted up and overgrown, without any water in it, but later on there was quite a bit of water in the far corner, just at a very low level, so maybe (no joke this) there is a leak somewhere?
Eventually, we circled through the lovely bluebell wood near the end of the route and then were led astray by a local SWCer to try to find another part full of the blue pest but we didn't find it, so eventually picked up the proscribed route again.
Food and drink at The Cuckfield it was then, and the conversation still kept flowing. Nice.