THIS exhilarating walk to Westhope Hill Common begins and ends at Queenswood, a country park managed by Herefordshire Council’s countryside service in partnership with a local charity, Queenswood Coronation Fund.

Queenswood is the surviving remnant of a forest which once stretched westwards to the Welsh border and beyond.

Owned by the crown for much of its history, it was formerly known as Kingswood. In the 17th century it became part of the Hampton Court estate (not the royal palace near London but Hampton Court near Leominster).

During the First World War Kingswood was clear-felled to provide timber for the war effort.

After the war it was left to naturally regenerate but was seen by local people as threatened because land in the area was being sold off for the building of holiday homes.

In 1934 a public appeal launched by the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England raised the money for its purchase and in 1935 it was handed over to Herefordshire County Council.

While the whole of Queenswood is a designated Local Nature Reserve, its most important feature is 123 acres of regenerated, semi-natural, ancient woodland, designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest.

Notable among the species found there are oak, wild service and small-leaved lime, with many of the limes growing from very old coppice stools.

Queenswood is involved in various conservation initiatives such as the Herefordshire Woodpeckers Project (all three native woodpecker species are found there) and the National Dormouse Monitoring Scheme.

The dormouse, which is now nationally rare, is found throughout much of Queenswood.

Other mammals which occur there include polecat, fallow deer and muntjac.

Alongside the native woodland there is also an award-winning arboretum which covers 47 acres and has more than 1,200 trees from around the world.

It was established in 1953 to mark the Queen’s coronation, using money raised by another public appeal.

It was about that time that Kingswood was renamed Queenswood.

For those preferring a shorter, easier walk than the one described, there is plenty of scope within the boundaries of Queenswood, which has a good network of waymarked paths.

Other attractions include the arboretum, an autumn garden, an orchard, a children’s play area and a sculpture trail.

There is a National Trust shop which also serves as an information centre and there’s a café, housed in a timber-framed building which was the Essex Arms in Hereford before it was moved to Queenswood in 1989.

FACTFILE

START Queenswood Country Park at Dinmore Hill, on A49 between Hereford and Leominster, grid ref SO506514.

LENGTH Seven miles/11km.

MAPS OS Explorer 202, OS Landranger 149.

TERRAIN Woodland, pasture, arable, quiet lanes; undulating but not steep.

FOOTPATHS Excellent in Queenswood but the path between Upper Buskwood and Westhope is poor; where it crosses arable fields it is not always reinstated after ploughing, and waymarking is patchy.

STILES Twelve.

PARKING Queenswood.

PUBLIC TRANSPORT Bus (Mon-Sat) or train (daily) to Hereford then 492 to Queenswood (daily); herefordbus.info, traveline.info, 01432 260211, 08457 484950.

REFRESHMENTS Café at Queenswood.

DIRECTIONS

1 Walk away from the road, between the café and shop, then pass through an archway. Go along a lime avenue, following signs for ‘viewpoint, orchard and reading seat’. Bear left when you meet the Badger Trail towards the end of the lime avenue. Turn right by the autumn garden, go past a barrier then left along a track.

Keep straight on at a junction to meet a lane at Old Fruit Farm.

Turn right and keep straight on at another junction, past a private road to Buskwood.

2 Take a path on the left. Turn left by the top edge of a field, cross a stile, walk through trees then cross another stile but continue in the same direction, along the other side of the hedge.

Cross back again at the next stile then cross two adjacent stiles and walk uphill to pass to the left of a house. Proceed through trees and along a green lane to join a driveway which leads to a track.

Turn right, follow it to a farm road (Buskwood Farm) and turn right again.

3 Leave the farm road when you come to a hedge, on your right, at right-angles to the road. Strike out across a field to a gate at the far side, then go straight on along another farm road. Keep straight on across a field when the road bends right by a large oak. Keep straight on again when you cross a brook. At the next gate, next to a little spur of woodland, keep going in the same direction to cross another field.

4 After crossing another brook bear right across a field to a gate near an oak. Go along the left edge of the next field, then across another field to a stile at the far side. Bear right across the next field. After passing a pond turn right along a track. Stay on this track, ignoring all branching paths and soon passing through a cluster of houses.

5 When you come to a triangular junction turn right over a cattle grid on to Westhope Hill Common. Follow a byway along the right-hand edge for about 100 metres, then gradually move away from the edge, following tyre tracks. Fork right when the track divides, heading towards a farm.

Leave the common and pass to the left of the farm, joining a lane.

Follow it along a ridge before gradually descending towards Hope under Dinmore.

6 Keep descending at a junction.

Turn right by the railway then join a path on the right which follows the lane uphill to the stile where you left the lane in point two. Rejoin the lane and keep climbing, then take the first path on the left. Walk across a field to re-enter Queenswood then turn right to follow the waymarked Deer Trail to a road. Leave the Deer Trail, cross the road to the arboretum and turn left to return to your starting point.