Clare Castle Country Park Trust — Attraction in West Suffolk

I was born in Clare but moved when I was young. Haven't been back for over 10 years. Recently visited with my partner on a weekend. We went on a Saturday and we were expecting it to be busy but we pulled up to find a few spots left in the car park.

Reasonable price for parking and plenty of room to get pushchairs and wheelchairs out of cars if needed.

We started walking around the grounds and realised we needed the loo. Found one very close to the car park and whilst queueing was told there was another down the end of the park. The toilet wasn't really looked after. It didn't look top notch or like it had just been re stocked and cleaned. BUT if you are like myself and my partner..if you need to go you need to go. We had hand sanitiser and used that after touching things in there.

Walking around the grounds was lovely. Plenty of places to sit whether you need a bench or can just sit down on the grass. We had a climb up to the castle and was greeted with an amazing view. There was no one up there at the time which was great as we both hate it when places are crowded.

If you wanted to go up to the castle with a wheelchair or pushchair it might be a little difficult.

Once down from the castle we went and walked along the little river. Which was absolutely lovely. Very quiet apart from the few odd people walking past. They had information boards along the way.

Carrying further on up you end up walking past the car park which will be on your right.. you come to a bridge. This leads into a forest area.

Because my partner suffers with Fibromyalgia we couldn't walk to far either way, but from what we did see of the forest it looked absolutely amazing. Very tranquil and peaceful.

I recommend going there for 2-3 hours with a picnic. You can even bring dogs along as I saw a few running into the river.

Will definitely be going back and...

There is so much here! A castle, you make the short but steep climb to the top and there is a small amount of wall but epic views. A train station that is now a cafe. It's nice to walk along the platforms. The staff in the cafe were super friendly and the scones were amazing. There is also a toilet in there for customers but they were happy to let our children in. There is a short amount of train track left and the old goods warehouse had been turned into a visitor centre though that was closed and didn't look well used. The kids loved the old crane that you can push round. A short walk is the abbey which you can explore, it's still in use so you need to be respectful but they let you walk through the property to see the old parts and ruins, enter the new church and go to the shrine. There is a nice walk along by the river and a pond with swans. There is a great kids play area and next to that are public toilets. All of this is in close proximity. You can also take in a variety of longer circular walks with the park as your starting point. Next to the car park is a fabulous antique shop with a very good cafe. Car parking was...

Lovely walk. The carpark is reasonable at £1 per hour, if you pay by credit card. But, if you pay via the Ringo app, you will pay an extra 40% for as Ringo would put it, the "convenience", which is not reasonable. The are 3 Blue Badge spaces, but no concession made for the badge, also not reasonable. We did the Clare and Cavandish circular walk on Alltrails in mid October 2025. There had been little to no rain so was not muddy, and no flies or midges as other have been reported. Lovely views. Mainly through farmlands. Not well signposted or marked, but Alltrails made it easy to follow. We only had to detour once in Cavandish due to a short part of the route being locked off due to sheep. I did this walk on my "small" mobility scooter, but did have to get off couple of times due to narrow accesses, and exposed tree routes on the forest sections. So if you are thinking of doing it with a mobility scooter, I would say it is mainly scooter friendly if your disabilities allow you to get off every so often, and if your battery has the capacity to take on a 4 hour walk, with what will sometimes be rough terrain, and several...