Bright eyes and rosy cheeks

There’s nothing like a ramble through a frost-covered forest to put colour in your cheeks. Neil Coates picks Britain’s most atmospheric canopies

Top 7 winter walks

1 MACCLESFIELD FOREST Cheshire

Remnants of a Norman hunting chase dapple the ragged edge of the Peak District, high above Macclesfield. When frost arrives, it illuminates a captivating woodland landscape with quiet tracks leading out to reservoirs and moorland.

2 COED Y BRENIN FOREST PARK Gwynedd

Winter, waterfalls and woodland – a heady brew at the heart of Coed y Brenin, in the quieter southern realms of Snowdonia. Cold snaps can freeze the flow of the superb Rhaeadr Mawddach and Pistyll Cain falls deep in these mixed woodlands – walk out from the village of Ganllwyd on forestry roads to see the spectacle.

3 HIGHMEADOW WOODS Gloucestershire

Countless walks thread through the sublime Forest of Dean, including accessible routes at wildfowl-rich Soudley Ponds. On crisp, clear winter days follow tracks to the great bowl of Reddings Inclosure, where deer and boar forage widely.

4 QUEEN ELIZABETH FOREST PARK Stirlingshire

Umpteen acres of woodland make up the QE’s beautiful landscape of lochs and glens in the heart of the Trossachs. Stray a few miles further to Trossachs Pier on Loch Katrine for a hilly forest ramble along the Primrose Hill Path.

5 WOODY BAY Devon

There are surprisingly few places where woodland abuts the coast; this strip of North Devon bucks the trend, with access land and secluded lanes crossing the lovely old woods that fringe cliffs and headlands.

6 STAVERTON THICKS Suffolk

A modest pocket of woodland in the Suffolk Coast and Heaths AONB; this fragment of ancient forest harbours some of Europe’s oldest trees. Dozens of contorted, centuriesold gentlemen of the woods contrast in winter with the rich green hollins (holly copses).

7 STANLEY GHYLL WOOD Cumbria

Eskdale is the connoisseurs’ Lakeland – unhurried, uncrowded and unbelievably beautiful beneath a winter sky. The dale’s woodlands enhance this dramatic landscape; Stanley Ghyll Wood, near Dalegarth, is strung with paths, precipices, torrents and waterfalls with some dizzying vistas of the rushing becks. www.countryfile.com/walks