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Ideal for a sunny day. And for a cold rainy day: "There's no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing".
Six thousand acres of ancient wood running from Chingford up into Essex, bought for Londoners by the City in 1878 after the first great victory of the conservation movement: the Cockney Paradise.
WildlifeFree
The forest has been wooded since the Stone Age and holds two Iron Age forts, Loughton Camp and Ambresbury Banks; Henry II made it a royal forest in the twelfth century, which meant that only the King could hunt its deer while the commoners kept their rights to graze cattle and lop the trees for firewood, and it is the centuries of lopping that made the pollarded beeches and hornbeams the forest is known for, trunks like fists with a crown of branches above head height. When the lords of the manors began enclosing it in the 1860s the loppers of Loughton fought back, the City of London Corporation went to court on the commoners' side and won, and the Epping Forest Act of 1878 gave the whole of it to the City to keep open for ever; Queen Victoria came in 1882 to declare it the people's forest. It is 2,400 hectares of wood, grassland, heath, bog and ponds on the ridge between the Lea and the Roding, still grazed by cattle in summer and still owned by the City. The London end is at Chingford, where Queen Elizabeth's Hunting Lodge stands beside the visitor centre and the plain runs away north; the deepest wood, High Beach and Loughton Camp, is a few miles further up.
| Monday | Open 24 hours |
|---|---|
| Tuesday | Open 24 hours |
| Wednesday | Open 24 hours |
| Thursday | Open 24 hours |
| Friday | Open 24 hours |
| Saturday | Open 24 hours |
| Sunday | Open 24 hours |
Hours from the page that lists them, checked 8 September 2026.
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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.