13.4km (8.4miles) Difficulty 3/10. I was going to send you further afield today but I didn’t trust the trains.The morning takes you through the ancient woodland of Epping Forest. The afternoon goes through open countryside with good views around Copped Hall Park.
The forest is renowned for its ancient pollarded trees, primarily oak, beech and hornbeam, which support a wealth of rare insects and fungi.
Transport: The walk starts from Loughton Underground Station at 10.30am. Meet outside near the ticket gates.
Loughton and Epping are both in Travel Zone 6 on the Central Line. Trains are frequent. It takes about 37 minutes to travel from Oxford Circus to Loughton. Use the TfL journey planner to calculate your journey time from other stations.
There is car-parking at both Loughton and Epping underground stations.
Lunch
You first reach High Beach Visitor Centre where there is a refreshments kiosk (cash-only), toilets, café and the Kings Oak pub (0208 508 5000). There are also picnic benches nearby.
The Horseshoes pub (01992 712745 ) in Copthall Green is better placed, with friendly service and good food. (Their website’s kaput but they assure me they are still there). Nearby, the entrance gate to St Thomas’ Church leads to a pleasant grassy area with wooden benches suitable for a picnic.
Tea
You pass an (untried ) inn at point 31, The Forest Gate. Otherwise, you should find places in Epping High Street. Note that the Verde café is permanently closed.
Walk Directions here
GPS app or map are recommended. You can shorten the walk to about 5 miles by staying on the 3 Forest Way between paragraphs 7 and 30 .
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1 comment:
6 at the station plus a tiny dog. .One of our number knew the Forest well and showed us an alternative way in. But after that, we followed the walk route. Honest. The day w=started-cloudy-and-cool-ended-sunny-and-hot Quite a brisk pace got us to the Horseshoes for 1230. ( I could have got there for 12 if I wasn’t waiting for a blackberry feeding frenzy to end). But every cloud has a purple lining. This allowed a late starter to catch us up, and that late starter bought me a drink. So n=7 Plus the dog.
The Horseshoes was fully booked but luckily they could still squeeze us onto ‘The Bench’. Baguettes all round - except for yours truly. The afternoon was particularly strenuous because we had to keep throwing a ball for the dog- a straggly disjointed drippy thing covered in dog spit. (That’s the ball, not the dog).
No afternoon tea stop but a couple tarried at the Perky Blenders coffee-stall outside the Forest Gate.
Enjoyable day, enjoyable walk.
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