Stratford-upon-Avon Waterside – Charlecote Park loop from Warwick Parkway

Stratford-upon-Avon Waterside – Charlecote Park loop from Warwick Parkway

Moderate

5.0

(3)

108

riders

Stratford-upon-Avon Waterside – Charlecote Park loop from Warwick Parkway

02:19

48.2km

300m

Road cycling

Moderate road ride. Good fitness required. Mostly well-paved surfaces and easy to ride. The starting point of the route is accessible with public transport.

Last updated: September 10, 2026

Tips

Cycling is not permitted along parts of this route

After 0 m for 268 m

After 20.0 km for 97 m

After 45.5 km for 87 m

After 48.0 km for 268 m

Waypoints

Start point

Train Station

Get Directions

3.75 km

Descent from Norton Lindsey to Warwick

Highlight (Segment) • Cycleway

This is a great descent and fast road route to give your legs and your bike a fix of speed and freedom. Not entirely downhill and there is a junction to negotiate safely but well worth taking the run back into Warwick.

Tip by

19.9 km

Bancroft Basin

Highlight • River

20.0 km

Stratford-upon-Avon Waterside

Highlight • Rest Area

Refreshing and plenty to see. Well worth the short walk

Tip by

27.5 km

Wellesbourne Wood

Forest

29.0 km

Touchdown Café, Wellesbourne Airfield

Highlight • Cafe

Well-placed, cheap café. Popular with motorcyclists and (as you might expect) pilots.

Tip by

30.6 km

Charlecote Park

Highlight • Historical Site

The Lucy family owned the land since 1247. Charlecote Park was built in 1558 by Sir Thomas Lucy, and Queen Elizabeth I stayed in the room that is now the drawing room. Although the general outline of the Elizabethan house remains, nowadays it is in fact mostly Victorian. Successive generations of the Lucy family had modified Charlecote Park over the centuries, but in 1823, George Hammond Lucy (High Sheriff of Warwickshire in 1831) inherited the house and set about recreating the house in its original style.
Charlecote Park covers 185 acres (75 ha), backing on to the River Avon. William Shakespeare has been alleged to have poached rabbits and deer in the park as a young man and been brought before magistrates as a result.

From 1605 to 1640 the house was organised by Sir Thomas Lucy. He had twelve children with Lady Alice Lucy who ran the house after he died. She was known for her piety and distributing alms to the poor each Christmas. Her eldest three sons inherited the house in turn and it then fell to her grandchild Sir Davenport Lucy.

In the Tudor great hall, the 1680 painting Charlecote Park by Sir Godfrey Kneller, is said to be one of the earliest depictions of a black presence in the West Midlands (excluding Roman legionnaires). The painting, of Captain Thomas Lucy, shows a black boy in the background dressed in a blue livery coat and red stockings and wearing a gleaming, metal collar around his neck. The National Trust's Charlecote brochure describes the boy as a "black page boy". In 1735 a black child called Philip Lucy was baptised at Charlecote.
The lands immediately adjoining the house were further landscaped by Capability Brown in about 1760. This resulted in Charlecote becoming a hostelry destination for notable tourists to Stratford from the late 17th to mid-18th century, including Washington Irving (1818), Sir Walter Scott (1828) and Nathaniel Hawthorn (c 1850).

Charlecote was inherited in 1823 by George Hammond Lucy (d 1845), who married Mary Elizabeth Williams of Bodelwyddan Castle, from whose extensive diaries the current "behind the scenes of Victorian Charlecote" are based upon. GH Lucy's second son Henry inherited the estate from his elder brother in 1847. After the deaths of both Mary Elizabeth and Henry in 1890, the house was rented out by Henry's eldest daughter and heiress, Ada Christina (d 1943). She had married Sir Henry Ramsay-Fairfax, (d 1944), a line of the Fairfax Baronets, who on marriage assumed the name Fairfax-Lucy.

From this point onwards, the family began selling off parts of the outlying estate to fund their extensive lifestyle, and post-World War II in 1946, Sir Montgomerie Fairfax-Lucy, who had inherited the residual estate from his mother Ada, presented Charlecote to the National Trust in-lieu of death duties. Sir Montgomerie was succeeded in 1965 by his brother, Sir Brian, whose wife, Lady Alice, researched the history of Charlecote, and assisted the National Trust with the restoration of the house.

Tip by

35.3 km

View of Wellesbourne and South Leamington from Hatton Bank

Highlight • Viewpoint

This is a nice place to stop and take in the view toward Wellesbourne and South Leamington

Tip by

37.4 km

Quiet Country Road Near A429

Highlight (Segment) • Trail

Please use instead of the A429. This is a really safe quite road.

Tip by

45.6 km

West Gate, Warwick

Highlight • Bridge

West Gate is a grade I listed stone archway that dates back to the 12th Century. Located at the junction of the High Street and Bowling Green Street in Warwick town centre, the structure was one of three gates through Warwick’s medieval town wall and supports St James Chapel which forms part of the Lord Leycester Hospital. The A429 High Street passes to the south of the structure but the pedestrian footway passes through the archway.

The archway is constructed from a type of sandstone that is susceptible to a form of erosion called contour scaling. This results in a hardened crust breaking away from the face of the stone revealing a softer granular layer beneath. Much of West Gate’s masonry is heavily eroded, particularly on the outside elevation that faces the High Street and the vaulted section of the archway, beneath the chapel’s bell tower.

Tip by

48.2 km

End point

Train Station

Way Types & Surfaces

Way Types