From the gate of The Kilns, follow the lane back a short distance and look for a wooden sign marked “C.S. Lewis Nature Reserve” on your right. Enter through the kissing gate and follow the narrow woodland path. The trail loops round the pond and through a mixture of willow, alder, and oak. Allow about ten minutes for a slow circuit before returning to Lewis Close.

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Behind The Kilns lies the C.S. Lewis Nature Reserve, a pocket of wildness that shaped Lewis’s imagination. Once a brick-making pit, the area filled with spring water after the kilns closed, creating a pond fringed by meadows and woodland. Here Lewis walked daily, notebook in hand, to let his mind “clear the varnish of routine,” as he once wrote to a friend.

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The reserve’s stillness inspired many of the landscapes of Narnia — its reflective water recalling the Wood between the Worlds, its whispering trees suggesting the talking forests of Prince Caspian.

Today it is protected by the Berkshire, Buckinghamshire & Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust. Visitors are welcome year-round; paths can be muddy after rain.

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Visitor note: Free access; daylight hours only.

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