Welwyn Preserve County Park
November 22, 2020
Continuing with the mission to stay healthy in the midst of the pandemic, we discovered another interesting place to hike. Located in Glen Cove (Long Island), the trails are part of the former estate with less than 1-hour drive from midtown west Manhattan.
We arrived at around 11 am on a Sunday morning and there were plenty of parking spaces available. If you need to use a restroom, you can pay for admission at the Holocaust Memorial & Tolerance Center ($10). You can also obtain a hiking trail map shown below from the front desk.
The densely wooded preserve has four nature trails that provide access to a magnificent wooded stream valley, freshwater ponds, swamps, a coastal salt marsh, and a stretch of Long Island Sound shoreline. While we had a map, the trails were not clearly marked and we definitely went off the course for some time.
Easy walk to the Beach
From the parking lot, look for Crescent Beach Road. It is a paved road that leads to the beach and should take you no longer than 10 mins each way. Spend some time here to admire the beautiful Long Island Sound shoreline.
From here, you can keep walking along the beach and merge into another trail within the Preserve or return to the parking lot from the same way you came in.
The Real Hike
This is where some creativity and being adventurous is needed to make this hike fun. We started by taking the trail to the east of the Holocaust Museum (unmarked trail between 2 and 3 per the map shown above) and came upon some abandoned structures with very colorful graffitis.
From there, we were looking to merge onto trail 2/3 but whatever the trail we were on required us to break some bushes and branches.
While the journey was treacherous, we did come upon a really cool greenhouse..clearly abandoned for quite sometime.
Eventually, we found a path that would take us to trail 2…we just had to go down a steep slope.
Once we made it onto the “actual” trail (#3), we found ourselves ended up by the beach. You could easily get to the beach just by following my “Easy Walk to the Beach” above. Nonetheless, not seeing anyone else with the feeling of getting lost was fun!
Getting Back from the Beach
We took a short break and hung out by the water. Just when we thought we could follow the map to get back to the parking lot, we realized that there were no trail marks. The map labeled numbers 1-3 but we only saw red, orange, and blue dots. Using a combination of GPS and our wits, we eventually found our way back.
We were trying to follow trail #3 to get to #1, but before getting there, we had to cross this “bridge”.
Overall, we had a lot of fun and the Real Hike journey took us about 1.5 hrs (1.7 miles) to finish. I would recommend this hike, but just know what to expect before going there!
