A foggy winter walk around Woodchester Park in Gloucestershire

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you’ve had a good start to 2022 so far. I’m back from a two-week festive break and I have lots of interesting interiors, travel and lifestyle content coming up, but first I want to share a little photo essay from a Christmas walk around Woodchester Park in Gloucestershire.

Cradled in a deep valley near the Cotswolds town of Stroud, Woodchester Park is a lost world – a hidden landscape of woodland and grassy pastures, with a string of lakes and an unfinished Gothic mansion at its heart. Now managed by the National Trust and free to visit, it’s a wonderful place to explore in any season, but never more so than when a thick winter fog descends.

I always think there’s something enchanting about misty weather. It gives everything a mysterious and slightly melancholy air, diffusing light and muffling sounds. Distances lose their meaning, the hustle and bustle of modern life seems an age away, and familiar vistas take on a new, ethereal kind of beauty. Even though we’ve followed Woodchester’s signposted trails countless times and know all the landmarks along the way, we still found ourselves being taken by surprise as mirror-still pools, the 19th-century boathouse and the eerie shell of the empty mansion – abandoned in the 1870s when its owners ran out of money – emerged from the shroud of white. We felt like we’d stepped into a fairytale.

These photos were taken on my iPhone as I didn’t have my main camera with me, so they’re not the sharpest when shown on a full screen. But I hope they convey the magical atmosphere of Woodchester Park and convince you to visit if you’re ever in the area…

All photography by Abi Dare