Day trips from London: 9 Reasons to Walk the Long Walk in Windsor

There is a straight line, two and a half miles long, running south from Windsor Castle across open parkland to a bronze king on a hill. You can walk down the middle of it, for nothing, any day of the year. Almost everybody who comes to Windsor photographs it from the castle end and then goes to look at the castle instead.

That is a mistake, and the reason is simple: the best view of Windsor Castle is not from inside Windsor Castle. It is from about a mile down this avenue, looking back.

The Long Walk in Windsor costs nothing, takes about two hours there and back, and is the best thing you can do in the town without paying for anything. Here are nine reasons to give it the morning, and the history underneath it, which is stranger than the guidebooks let on.

What the Long Walk Actually Is

Charles II signed the warrant on 12 May 1680 and the avenue was finished by the time he died in February 1685. He had spent his exile in France, he had seen what Le Notre was doing at Versailles, and he wanted a processional approach on the same scale.

The original planting was 1,652 elms, set out as a double avenue, four rows in all, two on each side. The trees went in 27 feet apart. The inner rows stand 150 feet from each other and the outer rows 210 feet, which is why the avenue feels so wide: you are looking down a corridor the width of a large field. Queen Anne added the gravel carriageway in 1710.

Here is the part most guides get wrong, including several that will tell you these are seventeenth-century trees. They are not. Dutch elm disease reached Britain in the 1920s and the last of the Long Walk elms were felled by 1944. The avenue you walk under was replanted from 1944 with London plane and horse chestnut, then thinned in 1979. Not one of Charles II's trees survives.

What has survived is the line.

And the composition was only finished a century and a half later. The Long Walk physically starts at Cambridge Gate on Park Street, but the vista terminates on the George IV Gateway, which Jeffry Wyatville built during his remodelling of the castle between 1824 and 1840. George IV commissioned the statue at the other end at the same time, specifically to close the view. So Charles II drew the line and George IV finished both ends of it.

1. The View Back to the Castle

Walk fifteen or twenty minutes, turn round, and there it is: the castle sitting square in the gap between the trees, the avenue converging on it, the whole thing arranged by people who knew exactly what they were doing.

The trick is that the further you go, the better it gets, because the trees compress the perspective and the castle stops looking like a building and starts looking like a painted backdrop. Most people take the photograph in the first two minutes, from the crowd at Cambridge Gate, which is the one spot where it does not work.

2. The Copper Horse at the Top

At the far end, on the crest of Snow Hill, George III sits on a horse got up as a Roman emperor: laurel wreath, toga, no saddle to speak of and no stirrups at all.

It is by Sir Richard Westmacott, it went up on 31 October 1831, and despite the name it is bronze rather than copper, cast from twenty-five tons of obsolete brass cannon.

The figure is about twenty-six feet high and the rough stone plinth adds another twenty-seven, piled to look like a natural outcrop rather than a pedestal.

The inscription is four words of Latin and worth the climb on its own. GEORGIO TERTIO PATRI OPTIMO GEORGIUS REX. To George the Third, the best of fathers, from George the King. Whatever you know about the actual relationship between those two men, somebody chose to have that cast in bronze and put on a hill.

3. The Red Deer

The deer beside the Long Walk are red deer, and they are more recent than they look. The present herd was established in 1979 by Prince Philip, founded on two stags and forty hinds brought down from Balmoral. They are managed rather than truly wild, grazing the Deer Park alongside rare-breed cattle.

You will see them from the path most days if you come early or towards dusk. In the middle of a summer afternoon, they retreat to the shade, and you get a lot of grass.

One thing to understand before you go: the Deer Park is a separately fenced enclosure with its own kissing gates and its own rules, and it can close independently of everything else. In September 2026 alone, it shut on the first, the third, the fourteenth, the fifteenth, and the twenty-first. It can also close during the rut. The Long Walk itself usually stays open, so check the park's visitor updates page before you travel rather than assuming the deer are part of the deal.

4. It Costs Nothing

Windsor Castle is thirty-two pounds for an adult booked ahead, thirty-six on the day. The Long Walk is free, needs no ticket of any kind, and gives you the better photograph.

I am not arguing against the castle, which is worth the money and which you should do if you have not. I am pointing out that a family of four can have an excellent morning in Windsor for the price of the train.

5. The Trees, Especially in October

London plane and horse chestnut both turn yellow and gold rather than red, so what you get in late October is a warm tunnel rather than New England fireworks. On a bright morning with low sun coming through from the side it is the best light of the year here.

May is the other one, when the horse chestnut candles are up and the new leaves are still that acid green. Summer gives you full canopy and shade, which matters more than you would think on two and a half miles of exposed avenue. Winter strips it back to the bare line of trunks and the castle, which some people prefer.

6. It Is Genuinely Step-Free

This is rarer than it sounds and it is the reason I recommend the Long Walk to people who cannot do a normal country walk. The surface is tarmac the whole way and it is level, wide and well maintained, so wheelchairs and pushchairs are fine along the avenue.

Two honest caveats. The climb up Snow Hill at the end is steep and is the hard part. And the access gates are ninety-centimetre kissing gates that are awkward to work, with fixed bollards leaving a gap of about a hundred and sixty centimetres. The useful thing almost nobody knows: park wardens will open the larger automatic gates if you ask them.

7. You Are Walking a Ceremonial Route

The Long Walk is the approach used for carriage processions on state visits, and it carried part of the procession after Harry and Meghan's wedding in 2018.

But the moment most people picture is 19 September 2022.

After the funeral at Westminster Abbey, the State Hearse came to Windsor, and the final procession formed up on Albert Road and came down the Long Walk to the castle for the Committal Service, escorted on foot by the armed forces, the emergency services and the late Queen's own staff. More than a hundred thousand people came to Windsor that day and stood along this avenue, several deep on both sides.

Walking it on an ordinary empty Tuesday, that is difficult to put out of your head.

A correction I should make, because I had this wrong here before and so does half the internet: Garter Day does not use the Long Walk. The procession happens entirely inside the castle precincts, and if you want to watch it you need a free ballot ticket, applied for between 1 January and 1 March. Standing on the Long Walk in June will get you nothing but a nice walk.

8. The London Skyline From Snow Hill

When you reach the statue, turn and look east rather than back down the avenue. On a genuinely clear day, with binoculars or a decent zoom, the towers of the City are there on the horizon. Snow Hill is only eighty-five metres up, but the country between here and London is flat enough that it works.

It is the sort of thing you will not spot unless somebody tells you to look, and it reframes the whole walk: you are standing in a royal hunting forest looking at the financial district.

9. The Loop Back Along Queen Anne's Ride

Do not walk back the way you came. Standing at the statue facing it, turn right and follow the path towards the trees. When the memorial to a thousand years of the office of High Sheriff appears on your left, turn right again and head back towards the castle along Queen Anne's Ride, an avenue of oaks running roughly parallel to the Long Walk.

It is quieter, it is greener, you will meet a fraction of the people, and it turns an out-and-back into a proper circuit. This is the single best piece of advice on this page, and I am slightly reluctant to keep giving it away.

For Curious Minds: The Horse With No Stirrups

Stand under the Copper Horse for long enough and somebody will tell you the story. The sculptor forgot the stirrups, realised his mistake when the statue was unveiled, and killed himself.

It is nonsense, on two separate counts.

The first is that the omission is not a mistake. George III is dressed as a Roman emperor, and Romans did not have stirrups. The stirrup appears in China around AD 523 and only reaches the West at the end of the seventh century, by which point the Western Empire is long gone. Putting stirrups on a Roman rider would have been the error. Westmacott left them off because he knew what he was doing.

The second is that Richard Westmacott died at home of natural causes on 1 September 1856, aged eighty-one, a quarter of a century after the statue went up.

The story is stubborn, though. Michael Buerk repeated it live on BBC coverage of Prince Edward's wedding in 1999, to a national audience, and later apologised and blamed a research failure. If a broadcaster with the BBC's resources behind him can say it on air, the man selling ice creams at the bottom of the hill can be forgiven.

How Long Is the Long Walk, and How Long Does It Take?

The path runs about 2.65 miles, or 4.26 km, from the castle gates up to the Copper Horse on Snow Hill, so there and back is roughly 5.3 miles or 8.4 km. The park's own pages sometimes round it down to almost two and a half miles, which tells you the measurement depends on where you start.

At an unhurried pace, allow about an hour each way, and around two hours for the round trip with time at the top. Add half an hour if you do the Queen Anne's Ride loop, which is worth it.

It is flat the whole way except for the final climb. The gradient up Snow Hill is short but real, and it arrives exactly when you have already walked two and a half miles.

Can You Cycle the Long Walk?

No, and the rule is stricter than most people expect. Cycles are banned on the Long Walk and in the Deer Park whether they are ridden or pushed, so you cannot even wheel one along. The same applies to scooters, e-scooters, rollerblades, skateboards and hoverboards.

There is one exception: children under five may ride, accompanied by a walking adult. Elsewhere in the Great Park cycling is fine on the designated roads and on National Cycle Route 4, with groups capped at six and the sand horse tracks off limits.

Dogs are welcome. In the Deer Park they must be on a short lead at all times, no exceptions, and the maximum is four dogs per person. On the avenue itself there is no blanket lead rule but close control is defined strictly, which in practice means recall at the first call and nothing that bothers the deer.

Visiting the Long Walk in Windsor: Practical Notes

Where it starts: Cambridge Gate on Park Street, right by the castle in the middle of Windsor. You cannot miss it; it is the enormous avenue.

Cost: free, and no ticket required.

Opening: dawn to dusk. The Long Walk is effectively a public route, but the Deer Park is gated separately and closes on its own schedule, so check the park's visitor updates page the night before.

Getting there from London: two routes. Paddington to Slough and change for the shuttle to Windsor and Eton Central, about thirty-five minutes in total. Or Waterloo direct to Windsor and Eton Riverside, no change, about fifty-five minutes. The first is faster, the second is simpler with luggage or a pushchair. Oyster is not valid beyond Feltham, so buy a proper ticket. Off-peak returns tend to land somewhere between twelve and twenty-five pounds depending on the day, and Groupsave takes about a third off for three or more.

Both stations are a few minutes from the castle, and Central is practically at the foot of the avenue.

Driving: you cannot drive to Snow Hill, and there is no vehicle access along the Long Walk at all. If the full walk is too much, park near Bishopsgate instead and come at the Copper Horse from the other side, which is a much shorter approach. Great Park car parks are card only, no cash and no overnight, running from about three pounds twenty for an hour up to sixteen pounds for over four. Blue Badge holders and motorcycles park free.

Food and toilets: there are none. Not on the avenue, not at Snow Hill, nowhere in between. That is a five-mile round trip with no water and no loo, which is fine if you know in advance and miserable if you do not. The Two Brewers at the end of Park Street is the obvious stop at the town end, though it is adults only inside, so check before turning up with children.

Best time: early. Between eight and half past nine you get the avenue almost to yourself, the deer are active, and the light is low enough to be interesting. By early afternoon in summer it is busy and the light is flat. Late afternoon into golden hour is the other good window, and gives you the warmest version of the view back to the castle.

If you like this sort of day out, Audley End House and Saffron Walden make a pair an hour the other side of London, and for deer and big parkland without leaving town there is Richmond and Isabella Plantation in the park above it.

Go early, walk to the horse, read the inscription, and come back the other way.

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