Woodchester Park is situated in Nympsfield, a serene village in Gloucestershire. The park is owned by the National Trust and is open to the public.

The beautiful, forested valley is home to many buildings, including the Woodchester Mansion, and within the woodland, you will find the old Boat House. 

Distance	Total Time	Difficulty
6.59 km	02:06	Easy

The Woodchester Mansion, an unfinished Gothic Revival house, is not managed by National Trust but can be visited when open to the public. Since 1989, the building has been looked after by the Woodchester Mansion Trust. As the building is unfinished, it offers the opportunity to see how a house of Victorian period was constructed.  

According to the National Trust website, the Boat House was built in the 19th century and restored in 1998. It may have been designed by the architect John Adey Repton, son of the famous landscape designer Humphry Repton.

Don’t forget to check the post notes at the bottom of the page, with maps, a detailed table about the hike and links to everything mentioned in the post.

The Hike

We started our walk in the car park (Postcode: GL10 3UP). We used a postcode from the National Trust page (GL10 3TS), and it got us to the park location but not the car park. However, from there, you can keep following the road and you will see the car park signs. 

Note: The car park costs £3 a day. It unfortunately only accepts coins, so keep that in mind.

We went down the stairs leading to the woodland and turned right from the car park, following the pink waymarks. Overall, the trail is an easy walk with a couple of gentle slopes and is easy to follow as it is very well-marked.

There are three trails you can follow. We followed the pink one and it took us to the Boat House. There’s also an orange and purple one you could follow.

The first section of the hike was a nice, leisurely walk on the tree-covered road. The park is a lovely mix of hills covered in trees and a lush valley.

Not long after the trail starts, there is an area with a few picnic tables. 

From there, we kept following the pink waymarkers that led us to a corner where you could see part of the Mansion in the distance to the right side, however, we turned left.

We followed the paved trail until we crossed a little wooden bridge and turned right through a gate with the sign “LIVESTOCK GRAZING – Dogs on short leads only”.

We then got to an area where goats were grazing to our right.

There was a bull pasturing, so we kept this short crossing as quiet and fast as possible in order to get to the gate on the other side of the field. To be honest, the bull didn’t seem to care that we were there but better safe than sorry. 🙂

The pink arrow pointed us in the correct direction again, taking us to the lake. The trail took us to walk by the lake for a little while.

Eventually, we could see the Boat House.

It was a lovely and tranquil view of the Boat House, with the sound of water from a slope flooding in the lake and ducks slowly moving on the lake. We decided to pause for photos and a little snack. 

After our stop, we moved up the set of stairs, and following the waymarkers again, we turned left. Looking back from the top of the stairs, the view of the Boat House with the lake as a backdrop was lovely.

We spotted some grey heron birds in the distance (or so we think it is what they might be :)) and kept following the trail through various fields of grazing animals until we arrived at the Mansion.

Note: The park is home to over 100 species of birds. And various species of bats, including The Greater Horseshoe bat.

The Mansion area has another picnic area, a toilet, and a cafe inside the building.

Following from there, the waymarks now sent us to rejoin the trail, and a short walk later, we got to the car park again.

It was a great little walk with loads of dogs around. The main things to keep in mind, there are a large number of cattle grazing in the surrounding fields, and if your dog is anxious with that, it’s probably best to avoid this walk. Also, there is only one toilet, and we saw only a couple of dog waste bins – one at the Mansion and on the path from the mansion to the car park.

Cheers,

Ademar