Almost everyone in Queen's Hills lives within a 5-minute walk of a park
The Broads National Park begins 4.7 mi from the town’s edge. Parks and playing fields in Queen's Hills add up to 0.4 ha for every 1,000 residents; the typical UK town has 2.1. Footpaths add up to 24 km in the town and the kilometre around it, 3.0 for every square kilometre. Queen's Hills grades C for the outdoors: #30 of 51 in Norfolk. A character grade: it isn’t part of the overall grade.
What kind of outdoors town is Queen's Hills?
Read from the data: what stands out first, good and bad.
Queen's Hills’ strongest suit is parks close to every home, followed by the Broads National Park close by. Where it falls short is park space per person.
Queen's Hills grades C for the outdoors
Each chart is every UK town of 1,000 or more on one measure: the green bar is Queen's Hills, the dashed line the typical town. The number is the share of towns it beats; the five are averaged and the average ranked again.
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Graded, never part of the overall grade (like History and Civic life). It measures what is mapped: OS Open Greenspace leaves out woodland and open-access land that isn’t a park, and OpenStreetMap’s rural paths are more complete in some places than others.
Queen's Hills is 37th of 60 UK towns its size for the outdoors
The 60 UK towns and cities of 4,300 to 4,600 people with an Outdoors Grade. Hover a dot for its figures; tap one for its page.
Against towns its size, Queen's Hills stands out most for homes near a park: none of the other 59 has more. It falls furthest behind on park space per resident, where 57 of the others do better.
Show as a table
| Town | Outdoors | Green space | Near a park | Path per km² | Protected | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Keswick Cumbria | A+ | 9.1 | 100% | 4.1 | 100% |
| 2 | Lawford Essex | A+ | 3.4 | 94% | 2.8 | 40% |
| 3 | Chipstead and Woodmansterne Surrey | A+ | 10.3 | 92% | 4.8 | 12% |
| 4 | Great Denham Bedfordshire | A | 14.7 | 100% | 5.3 | 0% |
| 5 | Monkton Heathfield Somerset | A | 2.4 | 100% | 4.4 | 8% |
| 6 | Aberbargoed Gwent | A | 22.8 | 95% | 5.6 | 0% |
| 7 | Overton Hampshire | A | 3.7 | 92% | 2.5 | 45% |
| 8 | Fortuneswell Dorset | A | 1.1 | 100% | 4.6 | 0% |
| 9 | Kimberley Nottinghamshire | A− | 2.9 | 100% | 4.8 | 0% |
| 10 | Stanton Hill and Skegby Nottinghamshire | A− | 16.1 | 83% | 5.3 | 0% |
| 11 | Whittle-le-Woods Lancashire | A− | 7.7 | 91% | 4 | 0% |
| 12 | Exminster Devon | A− | 2.5 | 100% | 2.7 | 0% |
| 13 | Nantyglo Gwent | A− | 2.5 | 82% | 3.7 | 29% |
| 14 | Stokenchurch Buckinghamshire | A− | 2.3 | 90% | 2.6 | 86% |
| 15 | Wheathampstead Hertfordshire | A− | 3.1 | 93% | 4.2 | 0% |
| 16 | Horsford Norfolk | B+ | 6.5 | 97% | 2.8 | 0% |
| 17 | Girton Cambridgeshire | B+ | 2.8 | 92% | 3.6 | 0% |
| 18 | Elmswell Suffolk | B | 2.5 | 100% | 2.9 | 0% |
| 19 | Clayton West and Scissett West Yorkshire | B | 1.4 | 100% | 4.2 | 0% |
| 20 | Sowerby Bridge West Yorkshire | B | 4.5 | 72% | 3.9 | 0% |
| 21 | Blackhall Colliery County Durham | B | 1.1 | 95% | 2.7 | 0% |
| 22 | Earby Lancashire | B− | 1.4 | 93% | 4.7 | 0% |
| 23 | Alderley Edge Cheshire | B− | 2.2 | 86% | 3.7 | 0% |
| 24 | Finedon Northamptonshire | B− | 3.9 | 95% | 1.9 | 0% |
| 25 | Cwmavon West Glamorgan | B− | 2.3 | 75% | 2.5 | 0% |
| 26 | Irchester Northamptonshire | B− | 8.2 | 83% | 2 | 0% |
| 27 | Tibshelf Derbyshire | B− | 1.4 | 94% | 3.8 | 0% |
| 28 | Toddington Bedfordshire | B− | 0.9 | 86% | 3.1 | 8% |
| 29 | Milford on Sea Hampshire | C+ | 1.2 | 50% | 2.1 | 21% |
| 30 | Blaina Gwent | C+ | 2.1 | 53% | 3.1 | 13% |
| 31 | Stamford Bridge East Riding of Yorkshire | C+ | 2.5 | 100% | 1.4 | 0% |
| 32 | Brinsley and Underwood Nottinghamshire | C+ | 3.3 | 71% | 2.8 | 0% |
| 33 | Iwade Kent | C+ | 0.8 | 100% | 1.5 | 0% |
| 34 | Howden East Riding of Yorkshire | C+ | 3.6 | 94% | 1.2 | 0% |
| 35 | Southminster Essex | C+ | 1.8 | 92% | 1.1 | 0% |
| 36 | Halfway Houses Kent | C | 1.8 | 71% | 1.8 | 0% |
| 37 | Queen's Hills Norfolk | C | 0.4 | 100% | 3 | 0% |
| 38 | Backworth Tyne and Wear | C | 2 | 59% | 4.4 | 0% |
| 39 | Hope Clwyd | C | 8.5 | 64% | 2 | 0% |
| 40 | Eccleston Lancashire | C | 2.4 | 83% | 2.3 | 0% |
| 41 | Clapham Bedfordshire | C | 1.3 | 94% | 2.7 | 0% |
| 42 | Kilburn and Horsley Woodhouse Derbyshire | C | 1.6 | 75% | 3.6 | 0% |
| 43 | Skelmanthorpe West Yorkshire | C | 1 | 88% | 3.2 | 0% |
| 44 | Brundall Norfolk | C | 1.6 | 62% | 2.3 | 20% |
| 45 | Meopham Kent | C | 1.3 | 53% | 2.5 | 35% |
| 46 | Coxhoe County Durham | C | 1.4 | 66% | 4.4 | 0% |
| 47 | Long Lawford Warwickshire | C | 1.2 | 91% | 2.6 | 0% |
| 48 | Cuffley Hertfordshire | C− | 13.6 | 19% | 1.9 | 0% |
| 49 | Wesham Lancashire | C− | 1.7 | 87% | 1.8 | 0% |
| 50 | Saxilby Lincolnshire | C− | 1.3 | 100% | 0.7 | 0% |
| 51 | Chudleigh Devon | C− | 0.3 | 83% | 1.4 | 15% |
| 52 | Epworth Lincolnshire | C− | 1.6 | 75% | 2.2 | 0% |
| 53 | Freckleton Lancashire | D | 0.4 | 73% | 1.4 | 0% |
| 54 | Linton Cambridgeshire | D | 1.1 | 67% | 2.6 | 0% |
| 55 | Shepperton Green Surrey | D | 1.4 | 73% | 1.7 | 0% |
| 56 | Ynysybwl Mid Glamorgan | D | 2.3 | 60% | 0.7 | 0% |
| 57 | Banks Lancashire | D | 0.3 | 33% | 1.7 | 0% |
| 58 | Lakenheath Suffolk | D | 1.1 | 57% | 2.4 | 0% |
| 59 | Broughton Lincolnshire | D | 0.9 | 39% | 2.7 | 0% |
| 60 | Elm and Emneth Norfolk | D | 2.2 | 45% | 0.7 | 0% |
Parks, footpaths & countryside
Tap a number to zoom to a park. Tap a layer to hide it. The dashed line is Queen's Hills’ built-up area.
How close Queen's Hills’s homes are to a park
Each square is 1 in 100 residents: green lives within 400 m of a public park, garden or playing field (Census 2021 output areas against OS Open Greenspace).
Playing fields count, so a park within reach isn’t always one with paths or trees; 17 playgrounds are mapped in and around the town, about one for every 263 residents.
The Broads National Park is 4.7 mi away
Protected landscapes within 30 km, by direction and distance from the edge of the built-up area; circle size shows each one’s area. National Landscapes were called Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty until 2023.
Protected landscape begins just outside the 5 km ring the Outdoors Grade measures, so Queen's Hills scores 0% on it even though the Broads National Park is 4.7 mi away. The Broads National Park covers 302 km² and has been a National Park since 1989.
5 waymarked walks pass through or near Queen's Hills
24 km of footpaths, bridleways and rights of way are mapped in Queen's Hills and the kilometre around it, 3.0 km for every square kilometre (the typical UK town has 3.0). Bars show each route’s kilometres within 2 km of the town.
Waymarked walks are OpenStreetMap walking routes. Public rights of way are only as complete as the map in each area.
The best walking months in Queen's Hills: May to September
The town’s 1991–2020 averages (Met Office HadUK-Grid) and the daylight at its latitude. Outlined months have 12½+ hours of daylight, highs of 15 °C or more and little rain for the town.
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Daylight (h) | 8.1 | 9.8 | 11.7 | 13.9 | 15.7 | 16.8 | 16.4 | 14.7 | 12.6 | 10.5 | 8.6 | 7.6 |
| High (°C) | 7 | 8 | 10 | 14 | 17 | 20 | 22 | 22 | 19 | 15 | 11 | 8 |
| Rain (mm) | 57 | 53 | 48 | 41 | 56 | 65 | 58 | 60 | 58 | 80 | 73 | 65 |
April is the driest month (41 mm) and July the warmest (highs of 22 °C). Winter days are short, about 8 hours of daylight in December, and 80 mm of rain falls in October, the wettest month. Frost comes on about 41 nights a year. The climate in Queen's Hills →
17 playgrounds
Mapped within 2 km of the town in OpenStreetMap, against the typical UK town its size per resident. Named places are listed with directions; unnamed ones are only counted.
Every named place, with directions
Viewpoints 1
Plus 1 viewpoint without a name on the map.
Playgrounds 17
Plus 13 playgrounds without a name on the map.
Campsites 1
The outdoors in nearby towns
The nearest towns of 1,000+ within 12 miles. Tap a town for its outdoors page.
| Town | Outdoors | Green space, ha per 1,000 | Near a park | Protected within 5 km |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Queen's Hills | C | 0.4 | 100% | 0% |
| Easton 1.3 mi | D− | 1.0 | 0% | 0% |
| Costessey 1.4 mi | C− | 1.8 | 12% | 0% |
| Taverham and Drayton 1.7 mi | C− | 1.9 | 67% | 0% |
| Little Melton 3.4 mi | C | 4.2 | 72% | 0% |
| Horsford 3.5 mi | B+ | 6.5 | 97% | 0% |
| Hethersett 4.3 mi | C | 2.1 | 65% | 0% |
Horsford, 3.5 miles away, grades B+, the best next door: 97% of its residents live within 400 m of a park. Easton, Costessey and Taverham and Drayton have at least twice Queen's Hills’ green space per resident. None of the neighbours has a protected landscape within 5 km either.
Questions about the outdoors in Queen's Hills
Is Queen's Hills near a National Park?
Yes. the Broads National Park begins 4.7 mi south-east of the town’s edge. It covers 302 km² and has been a National Park since 1989.
What are the best walks near Queen's Hills?
5 waymarked walking routes pass within 2 km of the town, including the Norfolk Showground Trail, Red Route and Blue Route.
How many people in Queen's Hills live near a park?
100% of residents live within 400 m, about a 5-minute walk, of a public park, garden or playing field (Census 2021 output areas against OS Open Greenspace). The typical UK town is 83%.
When is the best time of year for walking in Queen's Hills?
May to September: the longest days, the warmest afternoons and the least rain of the year, from the Met Office 1991–2020 averages.
Is Queen's Hills good for walking?
About average for paths: 3.0 km of footpath and right of way per square kilometre, more than 59% of UK towns. For park space per person it beats 3% (0.4 ha per 1,000 residents).
How is the Outdoors Grade worked out?
From five measures, each placed among UK towns of 1,000 or more: public green space per resident, the share living near a park, National Park or National Landscape within 5 km, footpaths per square kilometre, and the sea within 5 km. It is a character grade and isn’t part of Queen's Hills’ overall grade.
Where Queen's Hills’ outdoors figures come from
- Parks and green space: Ordnance Survey OS Open Greenspace (parks and gardens, playing fields, play spaces, and their access points). Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2026, Open Government Licence v3.0.
- National Parks and National Landscapes: Natural England and Natural Resources Wales boundaries, areas and designation dates, Open Government Licence v3.0.
- Footpaths, walking routes, beaches and things to do: © OpenStreetMap contributors, Open Database License (ODbL), via Geofabrik, 16 October 2026.
- Historic parks, listed buildings and monuments: Historic England, National Heritage List for England, Open Government Licence v3.0.
- Rain and temperature: Met Office HadUK-Grid 1991–2020 averages for the town; daylight calculated from its latitude.
- The sea: ONS Countries (December 2024) boundaries clipped to mean high water. Residents near a park: ONS Census 2021 output areas.
- Grade: TownRatings’ Outdoors Grade, ranked against UK towns only.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Contains HM Land Registry data © Crown copyright and database right 2026. Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2026 (ONS boundaries). Northern Ireland: Source: NISRA; contains Land & Property Services data and Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland information, © Crown copyright, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Scotland: contains National Records of Scotland data, Registers of Scotland data and SEPA data, © Crown copyright / © SEPA 2025, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.