Turn right, pass the barrier and keep ahead at the nearby junction, leaving the signed bridlepath, and walking through airy birch, fir woods. In a further ½ mile you reach another major waymarked crossroad. Other 14th century documents record that, after the Battle of Boroughbridge in 1322, Robert Hode, an outlaw, took refuge in Barnsdale Forest in nearby Yorkshire, in those days part of Sherwood Forest. His connection to Sherwood is based largely on a medieval poem held at Lincoln Cathedral – hence his clothes of Lincoln green. Sherwood Forest is the traditional home of Robin Hood, a shadowy figure of legend and folklore. At this junction of paths and cycle route 6, continue ahead along the avenue of majestic birch trees. Turn right, shortly reaching the Centre Tree, a modest oak said to mark the centre of the medieval Sherwood. After a mile you reach a T-junction and a wide, grassy forest ride.

There are nearly 1,000 such trees in Sherwood. Contorted guardians of the forest, these gnarled and twisted old oaks loom from the shadows as they have for well over 600 years. This particular woodland is named Birklands: here the old gentlemen of the woods stand gaunt and decaying. Keep straight ahead past the barrier on to a track that runs just within the forest’s edge, with fields to your left. Facing the Visitor Centre from the car park, turn sharp left along the waymarked Greenwood Walk and walk to a major junction of tracks. The forest is a National Nature Reserve, protecting Western Europe’s greatest concentration of ancient trees. Sherwood Forest offers tantalising glimpses into this lost world, an enticing mix of woodland, heath and glades, scattered with oaks that started growing when Robin was a lad. Like the medieval rogue himself, the forests of olde England have largely faded into the mists of time.

Robin hood legend of sherwood maps