How to walk the Big Walk in smaller sections
On the Big Walk Map, you will find the route and potential shorter sections we have identified to enable people to walk parts of the route using public transport. The map shows relevant public transport stations and some waymarked walking routes from those stations to the Forest.
Section 1: Manor Park to Leytonstone
- 45 mins flat walking
- Local stations: Manor Park, Leytonstone, Wanstead
Enjoy the open landscape of Wanstead Flats, where you will pass Bandstand and Jubilee Ponds with their rich duck populations and have a glimpse across to the newly created wildflower meadows. You may see cattle grazing here, helping to improve the diversity of the grassland.
Section 2: Leytonstone to Highams Park
- 1 hour 30 minutes. Mostly flat walking
- Local stations: Leytonstone, Highams Park
As you travel north, past Hollow Pond, you will soon come to Gilberts Slade and the beginning of the high Forest. Here hornbeam dominates the woodland. The streaky bark is a good clue and many of them have been pollarded in the past for firewood.
From the Waterworks Corner Roundabout, you enter Walthamstow Forest and the ‘Sale’ to reach the ornamental Highams Park Lake, and the adjacent Highams Park, formerly part of the ‘Highams’ estate which extended up to Woodford New Road
Section 3: Highams Park to Chingford
- 1 hour 15 minutes. Moderately uphill in places
- Local stations: Highams Park, Chingford
The River Ching takes you through oak and hornbeam woodland to pass the very ancient trees of Barn Hoppit. Lodge and reach the Queen Elizabeth’s Hunting Lodge.
Section 4: Chingford to High Beach
- 1 hour walking on wide Forest paths, plus 45 minutes down through the Forest to Loughton Station
- Local stations: Chingford, Loughton
From Chingford, you drop downhill to Chingford Plain. The climb from here takes you towards the High Beach viewpoint, through thousands of ancient oak pollards rising to mainly beech as you come up to High Beach, a historic recreation destination
Section 5: High Beach to Epping
- 2 hours walk of Forest paths, plus 45 minutes’ walk up from Loughton Station at the start
- Local stations: Loughton, Epping
The walk takes you through the largest area of high woodland, dominated by beech with some oak, with occasional heathy areas, occasional ponds and where you pass one of the two Iron Age Camps in the Forest, Ambresbury Banks. As the Forest is a long ridge, you cross several deep valleys where streams drain off to the River Roding to the east. At Bell Common, you are walking above the M25 before reaching Epping.