News and inspiration for visitors to our woodlands and National Nature Reserves.

Wales, by Trails

We are looking forward to taking part in ‘Wales, by Trails’, the promotional campaign launched by Visit Wales for 2023.

We offer a huge variety of trails in our woodlands and reserves – these include 550 km of waymarked walking trails, over 600 km of waymarked mountain bike and cycling trails, almost 100 km of waymarked running trails and around 30 km of waymarked horse-riding trails.

Some of our places have accessible trails, suitable for use by everyone including wheelchair users and people with pushchairs, and cycling trails suitable for users of adaptive equipment.

Winter visits

Our woodlands and reserves are open all year round but we may need to close car parks or trails in bad weather including snow and strong winds – check the web page or Facebook page of the place you want to visit to see what’s open or closed.

Before you set off for the great outdoors in winter it’s particularly important to make sure you have the right gear, check what the weather will be like and ensure you are confident you have the knowledge and skills for the day ahead.

Our places on film

We have produced two short films about visiting the woodlands and reserves we look after.

The first film gives an overview of the range of visitor facilities in our places, and the other film focuses on visitor facilities suitable for younger visitors.

Running trails

If running is your New Year’s resolution, you may want to try out one of our running trails.

These trails vary in length and difficulty and provide an opportunity to run on off-road, traffic-free routes in beautiful locations across Wales. Every trail has an information panel at the start and is waymarked so you can feel confident about following the route. Plus the view is much nicer than in a gym!

Remember that you’ll need footwear and kit to suit the conditions - some sections of the longer trails follow muddy footpaths where trail shoes are recommended.

Mountain bike endurance challenge

Coed y Brenin Forest Park is the venue for the Fox Antifreeze mountain bike endurance challenge in March.

Run by Dyfi Events, the challenge features a staggered-start making for a more relaxed atmosphere and giving riders a better chance to enjoy Coed y Brenin’s world-class singletrack.

The route is a hand-picked remix of Coed y Brenin’s finest trails and riders can opt to take on one, two or three laps of a 12km loop.

Visitor facilities closed for maintenance

Trails, car parks and other visitor facilities at several of our places are temporarily closed over the next few months while maintenance work or forestry operations are carried out.

Check the web page of the place you want to visit before setting off to find out what’s closed.

Connect to nature to improve your health

For many of us, winter’s cold air and shorter daylight hours means a shift to spending more time indoors and being more sedentary.

Research shows that the weather is the main reason we’re put off going for a walk, but there are plenty of reasons why we should wrap up warm and go outside in winter.

In his latest blog, our health advisor talks about how spending time enjoying nature is good for us and the natural environment too, and offers ways to make the most of the outdoors this winter.

More ideas to get outdoors this winter

We hope this snapshot of news from the places we look after across Wales has given you some inspiration to get out into the great outdoors this winter.

Please do let us know what you think of this newsletter and share any ideas for content for future issues.

And why not forward it on to friends and family who would like to discover more of Wales?

For information about our woodlands and National Nature Reserves with visitor facilities, go to our Days Out website.

Natural Resources Wales

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