Experiment Along The Lanes

Contoured walk with a focus on 18th century historic features in semi-ancient woodland.

Hilly, with extensive views over and beyond the park landscape, mainly on open land.

Doynton is a village situated at the southern end of the Cotswolds, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, approximately 14.5km (9.0) miles from Bath. The walk starts from the Holy Trinity Church, Doynton, and takes you up the Cotswold escarpment, over fields, through quiet lanes and valleys, to the village of Dyrham, before returning to Doynton

From Swineford Picnic Area, the route climbs up through the village of Upton Cheyney; from here it's over fields, passing Beach House, and on to Coldharbour Farm. Return is back down the valley, up the other side via the humorously named – Grandmother’s Rock Lane, then onto the less humorous - Hanging Hill, up to Lansdown. Then a short section of the Cotswold Way. On leaving the Cotswold Way the route continues downhill to the village of North Stoke to pick and back to the Swineford Car Park.

Passing by Goram’s Chair, Tarn Lake, Beech Cathedral, Lily Pond, Rhododendron Walk, Rustic Lodge, Woodman’s Cottage.

The Church of St Mary the Virgin dates back to 1093, with various rebuilding over the years until an extensive refurbishment in 1878. Look out for two notable graves; an obelisk memorial to the Egyptologist Amelia Edwards and coloured head and foot stones of ‘Scipio Africanus’, a negro slave.

The gorge is at its deepest below Lover’s Leap. You can see massive cliffs of steeply tilted white Carboniferous Limestone. It is difficult to see exactly how the Gorge was formed. It would have been directly influenced by the most recent Ice Age up to 100,000 years ago.

Built in 1795 for John Scandret Harford by William Paty. A solid, simple design placed on a rise so as to appear bigger. Harford was responsible for commissioning landscape architect Humphrey Repton and thereafter, architect John Nash who designed the Orangery, Dairy and nearby Blaise Hamlet. More ornate additions representing a Greek classical influence were made to both the exterior and interior of the house from 1832-3 by C R Cockerell on instruction from J S Harford Jnr.