Queen Elizabeth Country Park

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In the Queen Elizabeth Country Park
View from the bottom of Butser Hill

Queen Elizabeth Country Park is a large country park laid out on the South Downs, in the south-east of Hampshire. It is to be found by the A3 London to Portsmouth road, three miles south of Petersfield. It is within the South Downs National Park.

The park contains 1,400 acres of open access woodland and downland, including Butser Hill (886 feet), the highest point on the South Downs, and War Down (801 feet). The woodland was mostly planted in the 1930s; it consists mainly of beech trees.

Leisure

Several Long-distance footpaths run through the park including Staunton Way, Hangers Way and the South Downs Way bridleway. On a clear day the county's great south island, the Isle of Wight, can be seen from the top of Butser Hill.

The park also contains several well regarded, waymarked and graded mountain biking trails. These are designed, built and maintained by the dedicated volunteers of the QECP Trail Build Collective.

The Queen Elizabeth Country Park parkrun takes place within the park each Saturday.

To the east of the forest, south of the village of Buriton lies the wooded hill of Head Down (673 feet), which "is an area that caters for clubs that require land with privacy for outdoor recreational activities, such as archery or off-road vehicles."[1]

Every July the Queen Elizabeth Country Park is the start point for Oxfam's biggest annual fundraising event, Trailwalker UK.[2]

Location

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material
about Queen Elizabeth Country Park)

References