Piggott's Wood

Piggott's Wood is a proper woodland walk just outside Shrewsbury - the sort of place where you can actually hear yourself think. It's not a manicured country estate with waymarked trails and visitor centres; it's genuine forest, with mature trees, uneven ground, and the kind of quiet that city folk come here for.

What you get is a decent ramble through mixed woodland. The paths wind through beech and oak, with enough variation that it doesn't feel repetitive even if you're only here for an hour or so. There's history lurking too - old woodland like this has usually been managed for centuries - but don't expect plaques and interpretive boards explaining it all.

Walkers will get the most from it, particularly those after a genuine woodland experience rather than a circular heritage trail. Families with older kids (say eight upwards) will manage fine; littler ones might find the uneven ground a slog. It's free to access, and you can spend anywhere from 45 minutes to a couple of hours depending on how many rabbit holes you want to explore.

Stay at one of the nearby parks - Love2Stay or Oxon Hall are within a couple of miles - and you can head here first thing before heading into Shrewsbury proper. It's the kind of wood that works best in autumn or early spring when the light's decent and you're not battling clouds of midges. Worth the detour if you're touring the area, though don't oversell it to yourself. It's a wood. A proper one.