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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.

Sunday 17 December 2017

Sunday Walk: Loughton to Epping through Epping Forest

Loughton to Epping SWC walk 197
13.4km (8.4miles)
Difficulty 3/10
This walk takes you through the ancient woodland of Epping Forest, to lunch at one of two pubs in Upshire. After lunch you are in 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. It is common to see deer in the more open areas. In the afternoon, you may. see English Longhorn cattle.
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 could have an early lunch at High Beach Visitor Centre where there is a refreshments kiosk, toilets, café and the Kings Oak pub (0208 508 5000).
The recommended lunch-time pub is the Good Intent in Copthall Green (01992 712066), a friendly pub with a good range of reasonably priced food.
Alternatively there is the Horseshoes pub (01992  712745 ) friendly service and good food.
For those hardy enough, the entrance gate to St Thomas’ Church, 80m before the Horseshoes, leads to a grassy area with wooden benches suitable for a picnic. (You might need a stick to ward off any polar bears.)
Tea
The recommended tea stop is the Verde Café, 88 High Street, Epping (01992 571476). Tea in china cups and delicious cakes. It closes at 4pm on a Sunday. If you're too late, there are any number of pubs, cafes and restaurants in Epping High Street (see text)
Walk Directions here
You can shorten the walk to about 5 miles by staying on the Three Forest Way at paragraph 7 and rejoining the main walk at the end of paragraph 30 (see text)
T=swc.197

5 comments:

Marc Ricketts said...

Now I might do the Walk on Sunday. But I can't Guarantee I will. Another Thing. Would you know if any Buses run on a Sunday from Epping to Waltham Cross on Sundays?

Mr M Tiger said...

Marc, the short answer is I don't know. It doesn't look like the 13 runs to Waltham X on Sundays. Both Journey planner (above) and Traveline suggest convoluted journeys that take an hour or more. Maybe someone local knows more?

Marc Ricketts said...

Yes I can make it Today. I can take the 217 Bus to Waltham Cross. Then a 66A from Waltham Cross to Loughton. And on the way back. I just take a small Tube ride from Epping to Loughton. Then take the 2 Buses back the same way.

PeteB said...

n=10 on this walk with the weather w=starting-cloudy-then-persistent-rain-from-noon. Tracks through the forest not too muddy and a local conservation group had repainted the signs so the trail after you leave the main track was quite easy to follow. At High Beach we stopped for refreshments at the mobile cafe - drinks, cornish pasties and rolls and though it was quite early we made this our lunch break as the weather was closing in. (This short walk does not really need a lunch pub as you can walk it in 3 hours.) In open country around Upshire it became increasingly bleak and sadly Le Petit Cafe in Epping was closed for a private party. So it was onward to Epping station and back to London on the Tube. Not a classic day out but a pleasant enough leg-stretcher and good company although the near constant thrum of Xmas traffic noise was a bit annoying. Back home by 3pm

Anonymous said...

There are lots of other tea and coffee options in Epping, for future reference, including better than average Neros and Costas.