This is a one-and-a-half mile walk at the National Trust''s property just east of Bishop''s Stortford. It is waymarked and partly accessible to wheelchairs during dry weather. (OS grid ref. TL 540 198)



Leaving the cafe, walk past the Shell House towards the dam at the end of the lake. During the eighteenth century, shells were quite fashionable and this ''small house'' may have been decorated by a daughter of the Houblon family which owned a large part of the forest in the 1700s. Passing the dam, the walk takes you among oak and hornbeam trees. Coppicing and pollarding of trees is practised in some parts of the forest, but these have not been cut for many years. (Coppicing is regularly cutting a tree to the ground to promote fresh growth to provide materials for fencing, fuel and thatching etc; pollarding is removing the crown of a tree, promoting fresh growth from the top of the trunk.)



At Post 4 the twin trunks of the oak suggest that it was once coppiced. The sparse remains of a stone pine near Post 5, and the presence of Austrian and Corsican pine in the vicinity, may have been part of an attempt at creating a Mediterranean feel to this otherwise typically English landscape.

Near Post 7 you can see the remains of former gravel workings, just a collection of bumps and hollows now, but with plants not found elsewhere in the forest, including harebells. Just below this is a managed area of marshland which supports a range of plants, insects and birds. In among the reedmace, you might see black-headed reed bunting perched, singing; from late spring through the summer, reed and sedge warblers may be heard, but are less visible; the water rail, too, although resident and having a variety of squeals and grunts, is seldom seen.



Where the path crosses the old London Road there is a 300-year-old pollarded hornbeam. This road was part of the old coach route between London and East Anglia, and the nearby bridge is actually called London Bridge. Continue through an area of grassland passing a fairly recent plantation of sweet chestnut on your left; you also pass a redundant badger sett and several mounds - the nests of yellow meadow ants.

The path crosses Shermore Brook, which is sometimes not much more than mud but does support watercress and the yellow-flowered creeping jenny in summer, and then follows woodland rides lined with thick clumps of blackthorn, blue with sloes in a good year. The rides are edged with old hazel coppice.



In a clearing near Post 12 grows a large variety of wildflowers - orchids, cowslips, valerian and many more. This is the site of an Iron Age settlement called Portingbury Hills. Fallow deer and the more recently introduced Muntjac sometimes appear.



At Post 13, turn back along a wide grassy ride, popular with meadow brown butterflies, bordered by silver birch and ash. The ditch along here is adorned with primroses and violets in spring and the pink flowers of centaury in summer.



Turn right between some old gate posts and head towards a divided ash (point 14A). An impressive horse chestnut at Post 15 directs you across a large, grassy area to where the walk rejoins the road, returning to the Shell House; go left through a gate to finish by the magnificent oak (16) near the cafe.