Brandon Country Park

Brandon Country Park

Address: Bury Road, Brandon, Suffolk, IP27 0SU

What3words: Main entrance baked.scribble.wallet

Terrain: Green – all relatively flat with only some minor inclines. Most paths well trodden flat tracks

Parking: Ample and very reasonable up to 2 hours £2.00 – over 2 hours £3.00

Brandon country park is a favourite of ours. It consists of in excess of 30 acres of beautiful parkland, a stunning looking mausoleum, lawns and pond are, along with an historic walled garden along with many miles of nature trails.

There are three well signposted routes to walk of differing length. The red trail is the easiest and runs for about a mile. The purple trail is much more substantial and covers three and a half miles. While, if you are feeling like a good long walk with plenty of time to kill the Orange trail runs for a total of five and a half miles.

Brandon Country Park came about back in 1820 when wealthy industrialist Edward Bliss purchased Brandon Hall. Edward then set to work at developing both his hall, the walled gardens and the substantial arboretum. The arboretum continued to grow over time. Edwards went on to fill it full of exotic and interesting species of trees and bushes from Blue Atlas Cedar to Giant Redwoods and Monkey Puzzle Trees.

Brandon Country Park is open to visitors 365 days a year from dawn until dusk.  The onsite cafe welcomes dogs on leads. The country park is now owned and managed by Suffolk County Council who do a good job of looking after it we have found.

Catering

The Copper Beech Café on site by the car park is open from daily from 10am except on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Closing hours vary according to the season and in the summer season of April to October is 4.30pm, with November to March being at 3.30pm

The Copper Beach Cafe we found does a good selection of hot drinks and light snacks. We both went for Paninis which were served nice and hot to our table outside. The food we did feel was a little bit overpriced. However it didn’t impact our enjoyment of the day as parking was good value and we could always have popped back into Brandon town centre which is only a few minutes away in the car.