OUR VISIT
The Family Discovery Trail is a Bath classic. It’s about 3km (2miles), is flat and has plenty for the kids to do. It’s brilliant for a family day out, we sometimes walk the whole circuit, other times just spend the morning searching for fairy doors and playing on the wooden structures. The sheltered woodland is a great option on hot sunny days. The path also takes you through open meadows and farmland.
- The magical fairy door trail, Longwood Elf and Fairy Foray, winds through the woodland between the Bath Clinic and Longwood play area. The doors are tricky enough to find and often scattered with glitter and other offerings. There’s log circles along the way for handy snack stops.
- The trail leads to a huge wooden play area, with a steep sided quarry with balance beams, a giant log, knotted ropes, scramble net and steps to scramble out. There’s a walk on see-saw, dens to build and explore and an epic tree rope swing, all overlooked by the Guardian of the Woodland.
- We also take the scooters for a paved downhill part of the walk and my daughter loves spotting cows, sheep, rabbits, birds and insects. Here’s some activity sheets produced by the National Trust for the little ones (links below).
MAP AND ACTIVITY SHEETS
The map below shows good spots for parking and entry points. Click on the map to open google maps for greater detail and directions.
- Family Discover Trail National Trust Map & Leaflet – this has a great map of the walk and lovely detail of which fairies and elves live at each tree.
- The trail is part of the longer 6 mile Bath Skyline walk offering incredible views across Bath.
PRACTICAL INFORMATION
- TERRAIN: It varies from meadow to woodland path, to paved and gravel. Almost entirely flat with a slight incline in one section.
- PARKING: Free, unrestricted, on road parking on Claverton Down Road. It gets busy but we’ve always found a spot and you can enter the woods from different spots, see map.
- BUGGY: Definitely buggy friendly. I’ve taken both a bugaboo bee and an iCandy and both work here even though the terrain can be slightly uneven in places and muddy.
- NO TOILETS & NO CAFE
PLAY WOOD FOREST SCHOOL
Play Wood Forest School is once again offering forest school sessions, summer holiday sessions as well as skills days for adults. Check out their site for further information.
We used to go to Tania’s wonderful class based in these woods with a mud kitchen, woodland themed craft, forest walks, songs and snack time around the fire, with tea supplied for the grown-ups and composing toilet facilities. Here’s a taster of what the site looks like.
