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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 25 August 2019

Sunday Walk: Loughton to Epping - Open Day at Copped Hall

SWC walk 197
13.4km (8.4miles) Difficulty 3/10.
Through the ancient woodland of Epping Forest, an area renowned for its old pollarded trees, supporting a wealth of rare insects and fungi. After lunch at a pub in Upshire, you are in open countryside with good views around Copped Hall Park.
The Copped Hall Trust have an Open Day  today from 11-4 that allows you to look round the estate and parts of the mansion. There's also a flower show, tea, home-made cakes, a bar etc. Tickets are £10. You can either buy them online or pay at the gate.
Transport
The walk starts from Loughton Underground Station at 10.00am. 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 TfL's 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  Horseshoes pub (01992  712745 ) in Copthall Green is better placed, with  friendly service and good food.
The Good Intent (mentioned in the notes) is no longer a pub.
Near the Horseshoes, St Thomas’ Church has a pleasant grassy area with benches, suitable for a picnic.
Or... head on to Copped Hall, where, according to their website, lunches and drinks are available (entry fee).
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.
Map and compass or GPS recommended for sections 8-10.
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). This, however, bypasses both Copped Hall and the Horseshoes.
t=swc.197

5 comments:

PeteB said...

Copped Hall is slightly off the main route but it is only about 300m there and back in total and the walk instructions give details. Copped Hall appears to be subject to a never- ending renovation programme but it has an interesting history and well worth a visit.

Bridie said...

Thanks for posting this walk Ian
I first remember Copped Hall 50 odd years back or so when it was a derelict building and you could wander through though this was before we woke up to H&S. There was always an air of mystique and sadness and rumour about why it was so as this was before Wikipedia etc.
Now Copped Hall is a marvellous building and the gardens are stunning, especially the walled kitchen garden.
I did briefly start to volunteer here a couple of years back and each visit was a delight and the work seems to continue apace.
Well worth a visit for just the gardens and the tea and cake were always a rather pleasant interlude during the work sessions.

Anonymous said...

In 1594,"A Midsummer's Nights Dream" was first performed here at a wedding.

Mr M Tiger said...

N=5 on a w=very-hot-cloudless day. By lunchtime, the group had fragmented. 2 ate in the Horseshoes – huge roasts. They were joined later by Slowcoach at the back. The other 2 had disappeared. Forged on ahead? Stopped at High Beach? We may never know.
Did anyone visit Copped Hall? We may never know. Slowcoach knows he didn’t. Slowcoach had a half of cider in the Forest Gate then got the tube home. A hot stuffy tube crammed full of carnival-goers.

David Colver said...

The pub-eating pair went to Copped Hall, where the interior offered welcome cool, since most of the windows are protected by metal shutters that are usually closed, so the brickwork had no chance to heat up in the sun.

There were
- a good talk on the history
- endless rooms full of exhibits
- good views in all directions as the building is on a ridge
- a pleasing classical guitar player
- an interesting display of old cars, including a Ford Thunderbird which was longer than any car I've seen but only provided seats for two
- an impressive walled garden
- quite a bit of parkland
- friendly volunteers clearly engaged by and committed to the cause of reconstructing the ruin
- tea and mildly disappointing cakes.

I had no particular interest in coughing up £10 to go in, but a persuasive volunteer at the barrier was effective at listing the attractions, and I spent nearly two hours there. Very worthwhile: it transformed what I thought would be a short and suburban walk within the underground system, likely to be over by 3pm, into a complete and interesting day.

Bear in mind that this was an open day and few of these things would be offered on most weekends.

Note to B: Monzo says yes.