A Day out at Belhus Woods Country Park | A Reindeer Trail

We always make sure to try and get out and about whenever we can, and we’ve recently pivoted a large amount of that to exploring nature trails and taking our walks toward landmarks and areas of natural beauty. We went to Belhus Woods Country Park, as we sought to find new places within our Tier which aren’t too far from home, and it was an absolutely fantastic discovery.

The park includes lakes, clear meadows, a visitor centre, historic woodland, a large play area and, on our visit, a reindeer trail which leads you around some of the woodlands near the entrance to the park. I often wander, or drive, a bit further than I need to because I like the general feeling of exploring somewhere new, or the freedom of not having to be somewhere, and so the trails that we’ve been going on recently have been very fun for me. Especially so because Jupiter and the kids have been enjoying them too.

Belhus Woods‘ Reindeer Trail revolves around eight reindeer models which have been placed throughout the woodlands, dotted around a short route (perfect for little legs) through some of the woodland. You can buy a booklet which is £4 and comes with a free toy as a prize (£1 extra per ‘prize’). The booklet gives you navigational clues to get you between each of the deer, with no more than a couple of minutes of wandering between each one. The kids really enjoyed the search and ran up to each of the statues to announce the name that was marked on them so that we could note it down in the booklet. It was really fun and the length of it was perfect – there wasn’t even a whisper of sore legs or tired bones.

Before we did that though, we went to the playpark that was there. It was quite a large playpark and had a lot of musical set pieces to be played with. There were lots of chime-based instruments as well as some percussion instruments too. There were actually a couple which had been taken out of use because of the restrictions which are in place, but even with that, there were probably nine or ten different musical areas to play. Our favourite was probably the steel tongue drum, although there was so much variety there (including metal seats which you could drum on) that it’s incredibly hard to pick favourites.

After we were done with the park and the trail we stopped off at the visitor center and grabbed some hot chocolates. This is especially notable because it was more than just a little coffee stall, in fact they had a whole bunch of seasonal hot chocolates in there including Cherry and Marshmallow flavoured ones – very nice, and a lovely end to a couple of hours out in the woods. This day out is great any time of year, but the reindeer trail is only there for a limited amount of time, so do explore it while you can.

This post is a part of our Blogmas series, with each and every post being about Christmas or Winter.