Outdoors & Nature

The best parks and green spaces in London, for a sunny day and for a cold wet one: there is no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing.

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Sydenham Hill Wood

The largest surviving piece of the Great North Wood, with a railway tunnel inside it.

WildlifeFree

Eleven hectares on the hill above Sydenham, and the oldest reserve London Wildlife Trust keeps. It is the biggest remaining tract of the Great North Wood, which once ran from Deptford to Selhurst, and it holds more than two hundred species of tree and plant along with rare fungi and the birds and mammals that come with old woodland.

The Nunhead to Crystal Palace High Level railway was driven through here in 1865 and closed in 1954 after the Palace burned. You can walk the track bed to the mouth of the tunnel, which is sealed and is now a registered bat roost. The cutting forced the diversion of Cox's Walk - an oak avenue laid out in 1742 by a publican named Francis Cox - over an ornamental footbridge that still crosses it. A Victorian folly is hidden in the trees, left from the gardens of the villas that stood here before the wood took the ground back.

Where
Crescent Wood Road, SE26 6LS
Nearest station
Forest Hill · 12 min walk

Open at all times. The paths are steep and stepped; the flat way in is through Dulwich Wood.

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