Select County
Select Town
Free car park with space for about 8 cars at the end of a residential street. TN22 2BS (W3W – spud.workshops.cushy) 2 lay-bys for about 2 cars each available down Rocks Road (W3W – collision.streetcar.handbags)
A pretty flat walk with a few small inclines. One road to cross but gated to prevent dogs running out. Pathways can get very muddy in the winter seasons and some of the paths next to the lake are known to flood. Grassland can also become a bit waterlogged. Good walking boots or wellies recommended for the wetter months.
Small, fenced pond in West Park (not for dogs) and a lake available in Lake Wood which the dogs can swim in. It’s deep with a few shallow edges for the dogs to get in and out.
There is a bin at the residential street car park and another bin in the lay-bys by Lake Wood (Note: you’ll have to walk down the road – no pavement)
Lake Wood hosts a very beautiful lake and various large sandstone outcrops that you can climb to the top of for a nice view of the lake. Look out for the “Boathouse” carved into the sandstone.
This walk is good if you’re looking for a shorter walk but can be made longer by exploring various routes. It’s a nice route that is unfortunately slightly ruined by the road noise from the A22. The area can become saturated with water in the winter months or after heavy rainfall, so decent waterproof footwear is highly recommended. A little woodland, a lake, large sandstone outcrops and a large field and several stunning trees are the main selling points for this walk. It’s well known by locals so can be rather busy, but when we arrived around 4pm we only saw 2 other people. We were running low on light when we arrived but managed to get a nice 2.3mile walk in while enjoying the views and allowing our girls to play and swim.
If parked at the residential car park it’s best to follow the path up, then along that runs near the main road, it’s fenced all along so no need to worry about your dog’s running into the road. Follow this path to the gate where you can cross the road to access Lake Wood. The road isn’t a very busy one, but some people fly down here and there is no path so be aware. - If parked at the lay-bys, you can enter West Park at the gate situated next to you or walk down the road towards the bridge over the A22 to enter either West Park or Lake Wood.
Once in Lake Wood follow the path down to a fork in the path, on your right is a dead end, but will lead you past a blocked off tunnel under the road and up onto the top of one of the sandstone outcrops. We went down the middle path which will lead you down to the lake, where the dogs had a little dip. If you follow the lake round you can enter the tunnel – which is known to flood after heavy rainfall. It wasn’t flooded for us but was very boggy, so I decided to follow the path just to the left and climb up the sandstone outcrop to a lovely view of the lake.
If you then go back down to the main path you can either turn right to another sandstone outcrop with the fallen tree in the crevice or follow the path up which will lead you to a nice large field. The grass was short when we went, but on previous walks here it has had long grass. You can do a loop of the entire field or as we did walk to the wooded area in the middle and follow the path around and then down. The path back in from the fields was extremely muddy all the way to the lake and will lead you near to the tunnel, where you can then go back towards West Park and explore the other paths back towards the car park.
