[1] From the west end of the car park, head approximately southwest to meet the tree line and follow this right to Echo Gate, a gap in the woodland. Keep the tree line on your left until you reach a red-capped orienteering marker number 3. Continue to a cross-path where you go right into woodland, then bear left at a fork. Follow the track until it bends right at orienteering marker 14. Ignore the path descending left (your return route) but continue on the main track and at this level, ignoring paths to right. At a major cross-track at a stone wall, continue ahead on a level and fairly straight course. Eventually, the track descends, bending first left then right. A little further, with a high metal fence up to your right, the track again descends left. Leave the woodland via a metal gate.
[2] Follow the lane ahead passing the backs of houses left to reach Westbury Lane. Turn right to major road junction on Shirehampton Road. Go right again and follow an inclined tarmac path right as it climbs above the road to a footbridge. Cross left into parkland and climb steps on the right. Turn left placing low wall on your left and continue through a tree lined avenue for approx. 0.3 miles.
(A) About halfway along this track (just past a significant older tree) Kingsweston House becomes visible through the trees right.
Ignore any path joining from the right and continue, crossing a tarmac path with picnic tables to the left. Pass a cricket pitch on the left, beyond which go left at a fork for a short distance to emerge at an open area opposite the grandly named ‘Oasis Academy Brightstowe’.
[3] Cross the road, then walk L passing Wood Lodge to a footpath at the end of the railings where you descend right to follow the right hand boundary of another cricket pitch. At the bottom of the field a path leads out to Shirehampton Road. Cross over to Shirehampton Golf Club and walk into the driveway to the start of the lower car park. Immediately right take a descending path through woodland following a stone wall to the bottom of the Golf Course. At a metal gate and National Trust sign turn left to go round behind the 10th Tee. Your route now follows the lower edge of the golf course, the path dodging in and out of bushes until you reach a spectacular view point with the busy Portway and the River Avon far below.
(B) This bend in the river – at Horseshoe Point – was always difficult for ships to negotiate and many were stranded here as the tide ebbed. The Portway was the most expensive road per mile in Britain when it was opened in 1931.
Continue on this route, exiting right at an obvious entrance onto the busy, 4-lane highway of the Portway. Cross with great care to a metal gate opposite. Beyond the gate, head across the rough grass bearing left then bending right to reach a waymark post with a gate behind it. Descend the flight of 45 steps, cross the boardwalk and climb steps on the other side with the railway on your right.
[4] Ignore the path left, but proceed ahead for a short distance before going right to playing fields. Walk alongside the railway as far as a high metal gate where the route turns right to, pass beneath the railway before continuing in the same direction, now with the railway left and the river right.
This next stretch takes you along the river-bank, just above the plastic bottle-line. The route passes iron bollards; a reminder of a more industrial age, and you will walk with mixed emotions at the state of this historic waterway. During exceptional spring tides the river level can threaten this path - if so, avoid this section, follow warning notice at "high metal gate" and return to the road.
[5] As you approach the sports ground on the left, the path becomes low-lying, narrow and overgrown, but with some relief, the path swings left at Sea Mills, where the River Trym joins the Avon.
(C) Before turning away from the river bank, take time to look at the two river watch stations across the river mouth. One is late Victorian while the other appears to be 1930's: both were built to help with the safe and legal navigation on the Avon.
(D) When the Romans invaded in force around 40 AD, they built a series of forts on the Welsh side of the Bristol Channel. They didn’t settle in great numbers in the area of Bristol, but what they did need was a location within reach of their Welsh forts from where supplies could be shipped, so they built a harbour at Abona – now Sea Mills. The ‘modern’ harbour was constructed in 1712, but the distance from Bristol and the lack of good road links made it unpopular with merchants, so when the city docks were developed, the use of Sea Mills as a commercial enterprise declined.
Walk beneath the railway and road bridges, then go right, crossing the Trym via a footbridge. Turn left now, walking over the grass with the Trym on your left. At the first road, Trym Cross Road, cross and continue until the river veers away and a small wood replaces the grass. Here, a path leads you once more onto Shirehampton Road. Cross and go right to the road junction by the Mill House pub.
[6] Turn left into Bell Barn Road, then immediately left again following a footpath alongside the pub and its car park.
At a fork in the path go right and in a short distance you re-join the River Trym on your left. Ignore paths on the right but continue to eventually cross the river by a footbridge. Now go right and walk the length of the meadow with the Trym on the right, passing beneath a road and into woodland. Choose your own path now; they all reach a road that you cross to a car park.
[7] You are now re-entering the Blaise Estate; keep to the broad track on the left, soon passing the backs of houses. Where these end and the path reaches the brow of a hill, take the stepped path up left next to two silver birch trees. (If you see a footbridge over the river you have gone too far - go back). As the stepped path levels out you reach a fork. Take the lower right-hand route, ignoring steps up left in a short distance. Leave the main path where it bends right and down at a junction with an open area on the left. Enter this area on a narrow, ascending path, passing orienteering marker 15 on the right. You now climb steeply, with a house on the far left. In a short distance the path broadens and the ascent continues to a track junction. This was your outward route, with orienteering marker 14 on the right. Retrace your steps now going right, and at the next fork right again, to exit at the grassed area of Echo Gate. Head left to reach the open grassland then bear right to regain the car park.
(E) 300 yards south of start stands the three-sided folly of Blaise Castle.
(F) 450yards south of start is a cliff known as "Lovers Leap" from which you get a fantastic view of the wooded gorge below.