please empty your brain below
You can use the heat map feature on Strava to see how well used paths and tracks and find the less trodden routes.

DaveC | 05.09.23 - 7:14 a.m. | #

Nope,never been.

But now quite want to.

dom | 05.09.23 - 7:23 a.m. | #

Have I been there? No, of course not! 😉

Jo W | 05.09.23 - 7:34 a.m. | #

I didn't realise it was there. Mrs Wiz was fixated on Warley Place, so we visited there often. I did once stray as far as the footbridge while she was doing whatever entomologists do for hours in open woodlands, but I never stepped off the other side.

Simon | Homepage | 05.09.23 - 7:45 a.m. | #

I started this post in full agreement that I, being on the other side of the world, was unlikely to have been wherever you were going. But then you start talking about being near the M25, east of Upminster, and I started to wonder...

Back around 2005 or 2006 I went on a walk with a group that left Upminster, going past the art noveau church in Great Warley crossing the M25 on a bridge that sounds very much like the one you mention on the way out, and going underneath along the railway to the south on the way back. So while, I'm not 100% sure I've specifically been in the Folkes Lane Woodland, there's a good chance we walked through, and in any case I've been a whole lot closer to it that I imagined at the start!

Jonathan D | 05.09.23 - 8:27 a.m. | #

I have been there once. Used to live in havering, but didn't go there then.

Chris | 05.09.23 - 8:32 a.m. | #

You are right, never been there. But many of us would have ventured a mile or so from it on London Loop section 22. And the M25 of course. Looks pleasant, probably a long stretch for a day trip from this part of the world though.

davews | 05.09.23 - 8:40 a.m. | #

So I am about to move to the US NE for a few years at least, and will not be able to contribute local info any longer. Yet I take this post's opportunity to celebrate London's versatility, as I am spending a week in a Hotel in Stamford Hill not far from where I lived in Hackney.

So I had never been to Stamford Hill yet it is a fascinating piece of London, what with the second largest traditional jewish community in the world outside Israel and Springfield Park, to name a few amenities. Incredible proximity to canals, river, wetlands and projects (AmEng)/Estates (BrEng).
I will be missing all the open house etc action in September but am eagerly awaiting reading about it here.

international reader | 05.09.23 - 9:23 a.m. | #

If you'd picked an equivalent spot to the west of London instead I'd probably have been able to claim it. The M25 looks remarkably similar, complete with a convenient overbridge to take the photo from, and there's even a bridleway tracking the edge of the motorway which is troublesome underfoot because the mud has dried in clipclopped lumps.

Now we just have to wait for someone to pop up and say they've been there and remember setting fire to the picnic table.

Andrew S | 05.09.23 - 9:29 a.m. | #

I just had a nice gaze at the old OS map, New Popular 1 inch, to remind me of the view we used to enjoy from the hill near Bereden’s Lane, on the footpath to Tomkyns Lane. We got the 247 from the Drill at Gidea Park to the Thatchers Arms, Warley and walked back a bit, round and up to Tyler’s Common (we knew it as Upminster Common) and got the bus back from there.

You were on a bit of the same path, but the hill has all gone, replaced by the huge cutting of the M25. It was a truly idyllic and very quiet hidden-away fold of countryside in the mid-1960s. The 1979-80 building of the motorway obliterated that with the largest soft-rock road cutting in Europe, removing the whole of the hill and the dell next to it. I was so very saddened. What a loss.

There were gains, in a way, as the haul of fossils from the London Clay excavation was useful in establishing the zones of deposition of the clay and the fossils now reside in the Essex Field Club’s Green Centre at Wat Tyler Park, Pitsea.

But the memory of the lost countryside, the quietness and the view lasts in my mind. I am heartened that you have discovered at least a remnant of that tranquillity and shared it with us, thank you.

Herbof | 05.09.23 - 10:30 a.m. | #

That’ll be a big old no from me DG.

Kevin Hennessy | 05.09.23 - 10:59 a.m. | #

Wow, a few nostalgic memories from the other side of the world. This area was my old stamping ground when growing up, way before the M25 was even dreamed of. I cycled on the Southend Road, one of the few roads to have a cycle path, and up Warley road to Upminster Common (Tyler’s Common) many times. I camped in a field near Childerditch Common twice a year with my Youth Club - but I have never heard of Folkes Lane Wood. You have done well DG.

Herbof’s bruvver | 05.09.23 - 11:33 a.m. | #

I certainly won't be the one to spoil this blog post because the closest places I've been to this spot would be Upminster and Harold Wood. I don't even think I've ever used this stretch of the M25.

X-Plaistow | 05.09.23 - 12:01 p.m. | #

So close. Tylers Wood and Pages Wood on our rambles through Thames Chase but not yet Folkes Lane Wood

JohnC | 05.09.23 - 12:43 p.m. | #

It's me! Yes, I went there last year. "Of course in the old days, all this used to be fields" Quite odd to find a young forest instead, after a brief 30 year break.

fred | 05.09.23 - 12:56 p.m. | #

Clipclopped clumps! Masterful!

Mark | 05.09.23 - 4:12 p.m. | #

A no from me too, but who knows, one day? Assuming I don't leave it too late.

Cornish Cockney | 05.09.23 - 6:05 p.m. | #

No I haven't been to this nice sounding spot but I once went across London to see warley place during daffodil time and saw the metallic church where mad composer Peter Warlocks dad was the vicar. It's worth investigating

Jenny | 05.09.23 - 7:24 p.m. | #

Considering you blog mainly about London stuff to others that read about London stuff, out of 2000 readers (many of whom are more than 50% of the way through their life), the probability that that at least one would have visited the same publicly accessible place as you might be quite high.

Still Anon | 06.09.23 - 7:31 a.m. | #

A bit late coming to this, but yes! I've been there more than once. I discovered it while out running (I live in Harold Wood) and it'a now on one of my occasional routes.
I'd never have found it otherwise, it really isn't somewhere most people would just chance upon, there very few places nearby you'd be likely to go.

Andrew Adams | 08.09.23 - 11:00 p.m. | #











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