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Haldon Forest Park: Why We Should Cherish Easy Access to Nature
The UK’s managed forests help make the outdoors accessible to everyone
I’ve spent a lot of my life in relative proximity to a mountain bike. Not a fancy one, don’t go getting any ideas. In fact, the first time I rode a bike with any form of suspension was at the grand old age of 26 when I hired one in Canada.
It was a good thing they gave me a full-suspension bike because the green trails in Canada make our blacks look like a child’s play park. I’m exaggerating, but you catch my drift.
I’ve always been a mountain biker through familiarity, rather than adoration. When you grow up in a family of competitive mountain bikers, you get taken along for the ride whether you’d have chosen that hobby or not. Like all moderately uncomfortable and frequently wet pursuits I was corralled into as a child though, mountain biking has reappeared in my adult life as a full-blown love.
From City to Forest
Haldon Forest Park is the work of Forestry England. It resides at the top of an obnoxiously steep hill just outside of Exeter and would be a dandy bike ride away from my house if it wasn’t near-vertical.
