Surrounded by residential areas on three sides, you might be surprised by just how peaceful and beautiful this large woodland is. Take a walk among the bluebells in spring or bring your bikes and enjoy the multi use trails in summer.

If you are looking for a place to take the family for a walk in the New Forest, then Wilverley Inclosure makes an excellent choice with its firm, waymarked paths, toilets and a picnic area.

The play trail may only be a mile long, but expect it to take you a couple of hours to walk, for along the way are nine incredible wooden play structures that will enchant children of all ages. Moors Valley Country Park is right on the Hampshire/Dorset border and is host to an exceptional amount of forest attractions, most of which are free.

Alice Holt Forest is an extremely popular location for a variety of outdoor pursuits from high ropes courses to mountain biking. For the littlest explorers, there are multiple woodland play areas and Forestry England regularly host trails here based around Julia Donaldson stories. New for 2023 is a Zog trail which is detailed in this guide.

Creech Wood near Denmead is an easy to explore mainly coniferous woodland with a network of firm paths. It has an interesting history having once been part of the Medieval Forest of Bere and more recently the site of a WWII encampment.

I think this has to be our favourite bluebell walk. The flowers grow in their thousands in this little wood and our walk here on a sunny spring evening was simply delightful. Come in season and you won’t be disappointed.

Known to some as Hundred Acre Wood, West Walk is actually part of The Forest of Bere, an ancient landscape that once stretched uninterrupted across much of Southern Hampshire. Today, you will find miles of easy, marked woodland trails as well as an excellent children’s playground and picnic area.

Holly Hill Woodland Park is a restored example of Victorian landscaped parkland. You will find ponds, exotic tree species, rock features and ornamental bridges as well as native woodland with a fabulous viewpoint over The River Hamble.

Truly wild daffodils are becoming increasingly less common, so this flourishing patch is rather special. You can find it inside West Dean Woods, near Chichester.