Hampton Court and Bushy Park Short Walk T=Short.3
Distance: Approximately 4 miles or 7 km for those more metrically minded
Difficulty: 1 out of 10
Travel: 18:12 South Western Train from London Waterloo, arriving at Hampton Wick at 18:43. MAKE SURE YOU TAKE THE CORRECT TRAIN STOPPING IN HAMPTON WICK (NOT Hampton).
Return trains run every fifteen minutes until 23:30.
This is one of my absolutely favorite evening walks and has proved to be a real cracker of a walk the past few years at this time of year. Plenty of magnificent beasts starting the annual rut!
The walk meanders through a combination of the public grounds of Hampton Court Palace and neighboring Bushy Park with its resident deer population. The grounds are varied with pretty gardens and water features. Please ensure you keep a safe distance from any deer spotted in Bushy Park and do NOT feed them – they are potentially dangerous wild animals!
Post walk refreshments and possibly a meal can be had at the Foresters Arms, open until 23:00 with kitchen open until 22:00.
More information about the route can be found here.
Enjoy the walk!
3 comments:
Wow! What a night -- this walk never disappoints! Amazingly, n=9 soles braved the risk of torrential rain and set off from Hampton Wick under very dark and brooding clouds hoping the worst of the rain had passed.... Not so, about half through the slightly longer route along the Long Water, the heavens opened and we encountered a heavy and sustained shower.....eventually this eased as we shifted to Bushy Park -- where there was an ominous sign of deer culling taking place -- though reading to the bottom of the sign, the small print indicated this would not start until 10:30pm -- plenty of time for our walk -- but, one nevertheless opted to walk to Hampton Court station. Since we were all a bit damp and it was very dark -- we opted for a short cut... At first things were pretty quiet, then some bellowing could be heard....and some dark shadows....some large..... then as our short cut regained the route, we were confronted with 2 young stags really going at it with head-to-head combat...with a third larger and more mature male running over and bellowing..... we decided to back track and try a slightly different route.....which all went fine until again 2 large stags on our path were bellowing quite seriously at one another... again we opted for a diversion... the group separated a bit here with slightly different routes...All made it to the pub and enjoyed well earned drinks and food. A grand night out! Very exciting indeed -- we have never had to make so many diversions! Conditions were w=torrential-rain-then-partly-clearing.
Just to annotate Stargazer's report slightly: the experience of being in the park in the dark, with stags that we could not see bellowing all around us, and whose exact movements we could not be sure of, was very exciting. Not quite as dangerous as it sounds, because the stags clearly had better night vision than we had, and in the heat of combat I am sure regarded us as of no more interest than the trees. (They are used to dopey humans stumbling around the place, after all.) But there were one or two moments when it was not at all clear which way we could safely go, and that is quite a thrilling experience to have in the middle of suburban London.
Night time. Pouring with rain. Wild animals bellowing (impressively loud). Very Jurassic Park like. Thanks walk poster!
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