Hale & Woodgreen

Follows a section of the Avon Valley Path through fields and woods to the charming village of Hatchet Green.

You then pass Hale House and St Mary’s Church before walking alongside the peaceful River Avon. At Woodgreen you can explore a rural community with a strong village identity. The walk returns via shady tracks and woods to Hatchet Green and back to Woodfalls.

Hale is a scattered Forest community and at the centre of the village is Hatchet Green, surrounded by characterful thatched cottages.

The earliest cottages where built using cob in the late 18th century and are still traditionally thatched in the long straw style without the elaborately patterned block ridges common since the 1960s.

The green itself is used by the local primary school and is also the local cricket pitch. It’s also designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest for its rare plants and wildlife.

Trail Overview

Directions

1. Redlynch Sports and Social Club

   From the Woodfalls recreation ground turn left, walk for 20m before turning right down at the signpost to go down Lodge Drove. Continue past houses and go straight on when the road become a gravel track. The track bends slightly to your right through a metal field gate and into a meadow. Keep right following the old drove road down amongst the trees. At the bottom of the drove road by the gate turn left and follow a small trail heading back up the hill

2. National Park boundary marker

   Turn right at the National Park boundary marker through a kissing gate then downhill across a field and into a meadow with a large wildlife pond on the left. Follow the path straight ahead and uphill through a small wood. Cross over two stiles then follow the path to Hatchet Gate Farm. Go through the farm and right onto the tarmacked road called Hale Lane

3. White gate

   When the road bends left at Home Farm, go left around the corner for 50m then turn right through a white gate towards St Mary’s Church. The path follows the field edge before narrowing and heading downhill, through laurel bushes, past St Mary’s Church to join Moot Lane

4. Moot Lane

   Turn left on Moot Lane then right at the road junction. After 20m turn left up a small hill into fields under large pylons. Continue ahead across three field stiles to join a gravel track downhill. The track then climbs uphill and bends to your right to a waymarked junction

5. Lower Densome Wood

   Bear left at this large junction, passing by houses and head down a slightly hidden stile on the left. The path drops downhill through a pretty wood, over a plank bridge and then uphill to a kissing gate. Go across an open field keeping to the left. Cross a stile on your left and walk across the field diagonally to the next field stile and then over another stile close to a farm entrance

6. Stricklands Plantation

   Turn left onto the track and then immediately right along a tree-shaded byway. Go down the byway and then turn left at a waymarker pointing down a wide gravel track and into a wood. Turn right at the next waymarker and follow the rhododendron-lined bridleway uphill through Stricklands Plantation

7. Hatchet Green

   At the track junction and four-way post turn left, following the byway downhill to a track junction. Go straight ahead to join a footpath which turns right and uphill to Hale Farm. Cross a field through two gates to a large wooden hut. Continue ahead through the farm and a gate, following a shady path alongside a fenced field, with views of the tree avenue which extend across Hale Park to Hatchet Lodge. At the next two track junctions turn left to continue following the gravel track to a wide metal gate by a thatched cottage and onto Hatchet Green

8. Right through the meadow

   Turn right through the meadow at the AVP sign post near the woodland edge. Turn left off the path to a small woodland and continue uphill through the gate and on to follow a track uphill past small cottages to a track junction. Turn right and retrace your steps back along Lodge Drove to Woodfalls.

Accessibility

Moderate walking with a few short steep gradients. Gates, footbridge and 12 stiles. Woodland, field and bridleway tracks can be muddy.