Lower Peirce Reservoir Park

Lower Peirce is a small park on the edge of the central catchment with a nine-hundred-metre boardwalk running through mature secondary forest to the water, and the forest here is old enough that the canopy closes overhead and the light goes green. Long-tailed macaques, monitor lizards and squirrels are constant. The reservoir itself is still and usually empty of people, and the whole loop takes about an hour at a slow pace. The reservoir was completed in 1912 as the second of the central catchment impoundments, and the mature secondary forest around it has had more than a century to close over.

What you actually see

• The boardwalk - nine hundred metres through closed-canopy secondary forest.
• The reservoir - still water with forest running down to it on all sides.
• The macaques - troops along the boardwalk, habituated and bold.
• The quiet - one of the least trafficked forest walks in Singapore.

When to go

Year round; early morning is coolest and best for wildlife. Afternoon storms close the boardwalk. Weekdays are near empty.

Honest expectations

Macaques take food and bags and should not be fed; they are aggressive about it. Mosquitoes are heavy. The boardwalk is slippery when wet.

Nearby

MacRitchie is southwest, and Upper Peirce is north.