Salcey Forest Tree Top Walk

A lovely forest walk on designated footpaths or woodland tracks.  Once in the forest, you can plan your own route, or stick to mine!

Anything from 4 miles to 8, depending on how far you walk into the forest!

Hartwell
Or Wold Hartwell as it was sometimes known in the old days. You are treading on what was royal land again now. When Good King Henry VIII came to Grafton, as he did every year, he was not satisfied with how the countryside looked, so he enhanced his hunting pleasure by ‘emparking’ great areas of forest land, so there were parks at Grafton, Hanslope, Paulerspury, Plum, Potterspury, Stoke Bruerne and 260 acres at Hartwell. South of the modern village in the middle of what was Hartwell Park is a medieval village just south of Chapel Farm. The area was ‘disparked’ in 1630 and sold to a bloke who sold it back to the crown. Walk as far as Rose Lane and pick up the Milton Keynes Boundary Walk until you cross the motorway M1 and there are several paths to take you up into Salcey Forest.

Salcey Forest
Plenty of famous oaks here, including the remains of the Salcey Oak, once the biggest in England with a circumference of 46 feet and 10 inches. It was fifteen hundred years old in the nineteenth century; now the vandals have left only a pile of bits on the path that takes you into Salcey Lawn! Henry VIII brought Anne Boleyn here for a picnic…or something. The big house is private, but the footpath takes you right up to it. From 1635 to 1639 Forest or Swanimote Courts were held three times a year here. In 1635, 123 ‘poor people’ were tried and were mostly fined four pence and made to promise to be good chaps thereafter. Salcey Forest is now blessed with a fabulous ‘Tree-top walk’, 300 metres long and 20 metres up in the trees. There are lookout towers, a rope bridge over a pond and special disabled access. There is a snackery at weekends, but take a flask and a nose-bag and a ball of string just in case!