Brockley Nature Reserve & New Cross Gate Cutting
We first did this walk back in early Autumn so we're excited that the Brockley Nature Reserve, also known as, New Cross Gate Cutting, is opening again this coming Sunday 28th January 2017. In our humble opinion it is one of the London Wildlife Trust’s hidden gems. Currently it’s only open a few days a year but the word on the reserve is that this year, the London Wildlife Trust plan to increase the frequency of its opening times with the help of very lovely local volunteers.
Back in September, we fist visited this local nature reserve in, Brockley. The cutting is mainly woodland and the area supports 170 species of flowering plants, several of which are locally rare. The walk runs alongside the railway line, there are winding paths along a steep bank, steps so it’s not suitable for prams or wheelchairs.
On the opening day, the volunteers had a stall set-out with lots of reading material and wildlife spotting games and stickers for the kids. It’s roughly a 20-30 minutes walk but this mostly depended upon on how quickly the “Threenagers” wanted to walk, lead, poke everything with sticks. In the end, we looped the nature reserve twice as one loop wasn’t quite enough to satisfy us with a nature hit.
We finished the day wandering up to The Hill Station, a community cafe, shop and exhibition space to get some refreshments. The beautiful Telegraph Hill Park is well worth a visit as the Autumn tree colours are incredible in the lower park. Read more about Brockley’s and Honor Oak’s parks here.
Brockley Nature Reserve will be open Sat 28th January 1pm-4pm 2017. (If you miss it and want to keep up to date upon when this reserve is open follow the London Wildlife Trust via this page).
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