Sometimes you just want to go for a nice walk, nothing too taxing, chunky sculptures, ursine whimsy, suburban-adjacent, wildlife-abundant, shady interludes, refreshment opportunities midway, mostly off-piste, a bit of a stroll, won't take long. So here's a walk round Chislehurst that's both wooden and woody, nowhere near enough to make a day of it but a nice walk all the same. [map][leaflet]
The Bear Trail started as a single carved log in 2013, re-envisioned over lockdown as three dozen cheery bears scattered around the environs of Chislehurst. All were carved by Bedfordshire sculptor Will Lee in his workshop near Ivinghoe using sustainable oak, cedar and redwood. The trail was organised by the Chislehurst Society who initially promoted it heavily, raising money for two local defibrillators, but less strongly of late so good luck finding a map or leaflet. Each bear also has a QR code but this now leads to a page saying 'file not found', suggesting it only takes five years for a great idea to erode.
The original leaflet had a hand-drawn map, full walking directions and a single 12km circuit. The current pdfs instead show two big loops, red and blue, but with nigh no background information and an over-focus on using What 3 Words. I used the former leaflet because it's vastly superior, despite no longer being hosted on the Chislehurst Society website. I also chose to walk just a third of the main loop because it had well over half of the sculptures, stopping at Edgebury just before a 2-mile-long bear desert.
Elmstead Woods is arguably London's prettiest station thanks to the extraordinary efforts of the local gardening team. The two outer platforms are pleasant enough with memorial rosebeds, arty pillars, hidden compost heaps, shrubby tubs, a fairy garden and even a steam train called Steve. But the horticultural masterwork is on the central island between the waiting room and the tunnel, a patch of platform transformed into an intricate garden with raised beds and bee-magnets. And there waiting to greet you is Gardening Bear with spade and secateurs at the ready, surrounded (because it's summer) by a blaze of floral glory.
The next raised bed is wilder, this on the footprint of a former Permanent Way hut and attracting many a butterfly with its buddleia. Then heavens there's an actual lily pond tucked between platforms 2 and 3, this because it's amazing how much you can jazz up a black plastic liner, beside which Fishing Bear has been snaffling wooden prey with his paw. The adjacent patch of lavender is at its peak at present - I lost count of the bumblebees. Then come two shady benches ideal for waiting in a heatwave, one of which involves a little climb and the other overseen by a bear named Emma. It's phenomenal what they've done here on two hours of hard graft every Tuesday morning, as the certificates round the ticket office attest. Throw in a second-hand book corner that feels larger than some Bromley libraries and Elmstead Woods station is always worth dropping by simply for an appreciative look.
After leaving the station it was almost a mile before I saw my next bear, this after a hike up Elmstead Lane and down Cow Path. The latter is a long thin remnant from more rural days, a narrow stripe of brambly all-weather woodland preserved between encroaching cul-de-sacs. Cow Path starts with a pawprint post to confirm you're on the right track, its entrances adorned with multiple signs barring bikes and motorbikes but not cattle. And it ends with a furry wooden carnivore staring up at the sky bearing a carved message, hence its name is Welcome to Walden Rec Bear.
The next two bears are small and hidden in trees on the edge of Walden Wood so hard to spot. It took me three attempts before I found one high in the gnarled branches of an oak and the second I confess defeated me, my only failure on this 18-bear orienteering challenge. Cow Path weaves on from wood to rec to wood to rec, as I would have known if I'd ever managed to tick off the entire Green Chain Walk but this flailing Chislehurst tendril had eluded me. And it's on entering Whyte's Woodland that I finally reached that very first bear sculpture, carved in 2013 from the trunk of an oak tree felled by lightning. I had to wait 30 minutes before a mother and her small child stopped sitting/clambering on it, so I hope you appreciate the effort.
It's the Boating Bears, two of them facing each other in a tiny rowing boat and another two seemingly sitting on teensy rafts or inflatable rings. The fifth may just be sitting beside a fish, it's hard to be sure because Will Lee was just making the best of a fallen log, not attempting to be physically consistent. Ahead in Chislehurst Rec I found an extra bear that's not in the original leaflet - Baloo the Scout Bear, complete with green uniform and an armful of badges - this because the 5th Chislehurst Troop are based close by. The Friends of Chislehurst Recreation Grounds are the voluntary overseers of this chain of green spaces, their latest battle trying to keep the Roost cafe open, but otherwise what an excellent job they're doing.
Cow Path ends at the top of bustling bijou Chislehurst High Street, right beside the library which is good because there's another bear outside. He's called Darwin not because the great naturalist had connections to Chislehurst but because living in Bromley was sufficient. There are no maps or leaflets in the library, I checked. The other bear in the High Street is in the window of an estate agents, seemingly the only business persuadable to participate, and is no longer clutching his original SOLD board. To find the next you have to disappear down Church Passage where Lord of the Manor Bear stands guard outside the Old Chapel. This looks more 1990s than genuinely Old, having been blandly converted, and is home to a) The Chislehurst Society b) a second bear propped up in the side window. Twelve down, half a dozen to go.
Time for the second dull road walk, this time quarter of a mile up Belmont Lane to Edgebury. It's time to explore Belmont Open Space, five acres of dippy grass and woodland threaded through by the diminutive Kemnal Stream. I'd been before but only ever spotted one bear, the obvious one by the footbridge sitting on a book of fairy tales - naturally Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I'd missed Oak Tree Bear because he's tiny and several branchesworth off the ground, also Football Bear because he's inside the playground and I'm a bit old to be creeping in there. My favourite pair of bears were in a secluded glade at the foot of the slope, one beside a bench and a second reclining on a log opposite, briefly joined by a red admiral bringing a burst of colour.
This is where I capitulated rather than slog on to Scadbury Park for scant reward, hence I also missed out on Commuter Bear and Ticket Collector Bear at the ultimate destination of Chislehurst station. But if you've never been to Kemnal and Foxbury before then it's worth dipping deeper into this remote valley before heading off, even given the lack of bears, because it's full-on WTF round here. Obviously the Chislehurst Bear Trail is aimed at families with kids, not old men from the era of Winnie-the-Pooh and Rupert, but don't let that put you off an ursine exploration. It's really an excellent opportunity to explore somewhere new, the hunt for whimsical carvings simly an enticing extra, so why not grin and bear it?
