Welcome to Walking - The Forests

‘Between every two pines there is a doorway to a new world.’ With those words John Muir, nature writer and conservationist, perfectly captured the thrill of walking in woodland, where every step reveals something new to discover in the tangled world of close-knit trees. Britain’s woods now tend to grow in patches, rather than Amazonian expanses, but they’re liberally scattered so you should be able to find one near you (the Forestry Commission and Woodland Trust are good places to start). And you’ll find even the smallest forest can be an immersive experience, as the trees soon shut out the world beyond to enclose you in a kaleidoscope of whispering summer leaves, or crunching autumnal colour, or the sculpted austerity of bare winter branches. Britain’s arboreal highlights include the deciduous acres and woodland glades of the New Forest (above); the Caledonian forest at Rothiemurchus in the Cairngorms, guarded by ancient Scots pines; and the twisted fragments of wildwood like Wistman’s Wood on Dartmoor, where you will feel like you’ve stepped into a forest from a fairytale.