New Forest Walking Festival: a fortnight of guided walks

Autumn is the best time to get out into the New Forest, and the New Forest Walking Festival gives you a proper excuse to do it. It runs from Saturday 17 October to Sunday 1 November, a full fortnight of guided walks and outdoor activities for all ages and abilities, put on by the New Forest National Park Authority. The park sits about 20 miles from Bournemouth, so it's an easy trip for a day or two of it.

The programme is built around themes rather than just distance, which makes it easy to pick a walk that actually interests you. Folklore and history are well represented, with a walk on the legend and myths of King William II, known as Rufus, led by local researcher and folklore historian Vikki Bramshaw. If you'd rather look down than back, there's a guided walk on the forest's unique range of fungi, where you'll learn to identify the different types and understand how they fit into the ecology. For something completely different, a biofluorescent night walk is led by a ranger and a wildlife expert, and there's a session on conservation, coppicing and charcoal production with the Pondhead Conservation Trust.

Birdwatching is another big part of the line-up. Bird Aware Solent runs a guided walk at Normandy lagoon and Lymington Keyhaven Nature Reserve, covering bird identification and ecology over about two miles and up to two and a half hours. It's free to attend but you need to book, and meeting point details are emailed once your place is confirmed, so it's worth sorting that one early. For those looking at the forest as a place to work, there's a 'Green Careers Netwalk' for anyone interested in working, volunteering or studying in the environmental sector, alongside a 'Network in Nature' walk for professionals, students and volunteers.

Exbury Gardens adds its own touch with the Head Gardener's Autumn Tours, which focus on the changing colours of the season. They run on 20 and 22 October at 11:00 and 14:00, last about an hour and a half, and are free as long as you have a gardens admission ticket or Friends of Exbury membership. The gardens are at Summer Lane, Exbury, and are well known for their rhododendrons and azaleas, which peak in May, and they come with a narrow-gauge steam railway. The site is dog-friendly and wheelchair accessible.

It's worth knowing a bit about where you're walking. The New Forest is a National Park covering 566 square kilometres, proclaimed a royal forest by William the Conqueror around 1079, and it's made up of unenclosed grazing land, heathland and woodland. Common grazing rights, confirmed by the New Forest Act of 1697, mean commoners can graze horses and cattle and bring pigs into the forest between September and November, so you're likely to come across livestock on your route. The festival is part of the wider 'For-Rest' campaign and National Park UK's 'national parks are the answer' initiative, both of which are about the health and wellbeing benefits of connecting with nature.

Full details and booking are on the National Park Authority's website, and they keep accessible walking routes listed year-round, with a New Forest National Park Walks app for when you're out on your own. One last thing: the New Forest Code is the rulebook here, so it's worth a quick read before you go.