Zog Activity Trails | Forestry England Review
A Review of the Forestry England Zog Activity Trail
(Multiple Locations in England)
I’ve just returned from a great family day out on the Zog Activity Trail created and operated by Forestry England. Read on to find out where they are, what they’re all about and also Charlie’s Ice Cream Rating!
What are they?
They are activity trails in Forestry England parks where you can follow a route and complete activities, quizzes and challenges along your journey into the forest. You will encounter characters from the Zog stories, uncover hidden pictures and images and collect stars as you learn different lessons – just like Zog did at Dragon school!
What Do I Need?
You can just turn up and walk around the trail for free as they are well signposted. However, it is much more fun if you purchase an activity pack (see photos below for a sample of the contents). This cost £3 and was well worth it. At our Forestry England park (Birches Valley in Cannock Chase) we bought our pack from the cafe near the main car park. I presume that you can do the same at your nearest Zog Trail (more on that later). Charlie loved wearing the Zog mask and using the ‘magic’ decoder lens to reveal hidden images around the trail on the special activity boards.
Where Are They?
This Forestry England website allows you to find your closest trail – just type in your postcode or location. I’ve tried a few random searches for you and have found the following Zog Trail locations:
Our Day Out
We arrived early morning to a very empty car park. Our local forest was easy to find with good instructions from the Forestry England website.
Cafe
We first headed to the cafe to pick up our Zog Activity Trail pack and grab a take-away coffee to go (using our re-usable coffee mugs of course!)
Trail
We had a great time on the trail. The different activities were really interesting and we had to spot different wildlife, look for birds nests and evidence of other creatures. There were also fun tasks that you had to undertake such as making animal noises, or flapping your wings like a bird or dragon!
Overall it took around an hour to walk the full trail – but we were going at quite a slow pace and doing all of the different tasks and activities – plus going off-piste when Charlie found interesting things to look at!
The Adventure Playground
Dad's Verdict
We had a great visit and for the price of the car park (£4) plus the activity pack (£3) it was well worth it - as we spent half a day here in total. You could bring your own food and drink to keep the costs down - but we have found that at our local Forestry England centre the prices are pretty reasonable.
If you are looking for a fun outdoor activity or you are trying to encourage your children to become interested in the outdoors / walking - then this is a great idea. The activity stations are situated at regular points along the trail which are a great incentive to keep on moving forward - and they are always clearly visible from a distance which helps keep the little ones motivated in walking forwards!
Pros
1. A nice easy going walk just over 1 mile from the car park – around the trail – and back again.
2. Good facilities at the trail we visited (Birches Valley, Cannock Chase) including a cafe, toilets, and an Adventure Playground.
