This is the Shipwrights’ Way — an approximately 50-mile route from Alice Holt Forest near the village of Bentley in Hampshire, England, to Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. It’s an imaginative version of the path that oak trees grown in Alice Holt Forest might have taken down to become masts in the dockyard in Portsmouth — although of course the actual lumber would not have taken this exact route!
The Shipwrights’ Way is open to walkers, cyclists, and horseback riders, and quite a lot of it is also accessible to people with mobility scooters or similar. It’s much more common to cycle it than walk it (and it’s true that there are quite a few sections on/along roads), but I still found it a lovely trail to walk and would definitely recommend it.
I walked it over three days in November 2024 and February 2025 — this is the first of the three, which was about 18 miles, from Bentley to Petersfield.