Oxleas Wood.
I discovered Oxleas Wood when I had the madcap idea that the first weeks of January were a good time to get up on a Sunday morning in the frost to see a sunrise. (These things happen when you get to a certain age. We are frequently to be seen as a Lycra streak on Q1 in the commute too. No telling.) Greenwich’s One Tree Hil was facing the wrong direction, and after a little homework we took a punt that a hill at Oxleas faced East.
Well, it kind of did, but the early sunrises of January were a bit underwhelming and the cafe at the top of the hill didn’t open til 8:30 (declining to serve some quite interesting sounding breakfasts until 9:30… yay!) but we figured we should wait for the best cloud cover and kept on trying. And gradually moved on from our believed vantage point kind of tip-toeing on a tree root, with heads twisted kind of eastwards, to discovering the pathways through trees, that are different every day we go. In fact the winter scenes get pretty magical sometimes.
![Oxleas in the winter time](https://i0.wp.com/blackheath.london/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/5C5D42E5-312F-4158-8B72-21F66CFA6F2C-768x1024.jpeg?resize=768%2C1024)
Frankly after a few visits, we were addicted and our summer (slightly less sunrise related) visits have provided different (although more traditional) views of beauty to that I find I can’t go on holiday anymore, I would miss the thrill of seeing oxleas under different atmospheric conditions.
![](https://i0.wp.com/blackheath.london/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/95DADFA1-971A-42CC-8E4F-AA3E4D92B613-768x1024.jpeg?resize=551%2C734)
So much more than manicured Greenwich Park.