Start with the map, not the car park

Every good woodland walk begins at the kitchen table. Before you think about boots or sandwiches, lay out a large-scale map — an Ordnance Survey Explorer at 1:25,000 gives you four centimetres to the kilometre, which is plenty to see individual tracks, stream crossings and the shape of the tree cover. Broadleaved woodland shows as green shading; the darker, more broken blocks, sitting over contours that wrinkle and fold rather than sweeping in smooth curves, are a strong hint you are looking at an old wood rather than a twentieth-century planting of conifers.

Study the rights of way next. Public footpaths usually appear as short green dashes, bridleways as longer ones, and permissive paths in a different colour entirely — the key printed in the map margin will tell you which is which, and it varies between editions. Mark the places where paths meet lanes and farm tracks. Those junctions are your escape routes if the weather turns early or a path has been ploughed out. Ancient woods are often crossed by a patchwork of routes, and the gentlest loop usually follows the wood's edge for a while before cutting quietly through the middle.

Reading the woodland's diary before you go

Ancient woodland is a working landscape as well as a quiet one. Before setting out, spend ten minutes checking what might be happening there this week. Parish noticeboards, gate notices, estate offices and local walking groups are all good sources, and a quick look at the county rights-of-way pages will flag any formal diversions.

Things to watch for include:

• Nesting season, roughly March to August, when many owners ask walkers to keep dogs close and stick to main rides.
• Deer and game management, which may close a ride for a handful of days in winter, usually with signs posted at the entrances.
• Forestry work, where felling or thinning means temporary closures. Never duck under red-and-white tape; the route will be open again within days or weeks.
• Permissive paths, which are a courtesy rather than a right and can be closed for a few days each year, often for stock or shooting.

Spring is also when bluebell woods fill with visitors. Keep to the path through the flowering weeks — a bluebell takes years to recover from being trampled, and the bulbs sit surprisingly close to the surface.

Build the loop around a gentle three miles

For a first visit, aim for roughly four to five kilometres, or two and a half to three miles: about ninety minutes at a talking pace, with time to stop. Contour lines are your friend here. Where a wood sits on a scarp, the low path along the foot is often far kinder than the ridge, and the difference between a pleasant amble and a lung-stretcher is usually only twenty metres of climb.

Count the gates and stiles on the map before you commit. A route with six stiles, two squeeze gaps and a kissing gate is a very different afternoon from one with three easy gates, particularly with children, a dog or a dodgy knee in the party. Ground conditions matter too: heavy clay woods that are delightful in June can be a skating rink by January, and a route described as gentle in a guidebook may have been walked in high summer.

What to carry in an ancient wood

• Boots with a proper tread — roots and leaf litter are slippery even when dry.
• A paper map and compass. Signal under a dense beech canopy drops away more often than people expect.
• A spare pair of socks in the rucksack. Wet feet ruin an otherwise lovely walk.
• Water and a small flask. Pubs and cafés can be a mile or more from the wood's edge.
• A light waterproof. A leaf canopy keeps dripping for a good hour after the rain has stopped.
• Insect repellent in high summer, when damp rides hold the midges.
• Binoculars and a notebook, if you like to record what you see.

Trees and plants to notice along the way

Ancient woodland — land continuously wooded since at least 1600 in England and Wales — announces itself through its plants as much as its size. The old woodland indicators are worth learning, because once you can read them you can judge a wood's age within a few minutes of stepping inside.

• Bluebells, wood anemone, dog's mercury, wood sorrel and wild garlic. Where several of these appear together in spring, you are almost certainly in a wood of real age.
• Coppice stools: a ring of slender trunks growing from a knuckled, mossy stump, the signature of centuries of cutting for poles and firewood.
• Pollards: trees cut above head height so that livestock could graze beneath them. Many mark old boundaries.
• Veteran trees: gnarled oaks and small-leaved limes with hollow trunks. A rough guide is to pace out the girth at chest height — a metre of girth suggests a tree of real antiquity.
• Deadwood: standing stags, fallen logs riddled with beetle holes and bracken-coloured bracket fungi. This is habitat, not untidiness.

Turning the plan into an afternoon

Write yourself a short route card: start point and grid reference, total distance, the three or four turns that actually matter, and a rough time. Leave a copy at home or send a message to someone who will notice if you are late. Start early enough to finish in daylight, and allow for the fact that a wood slows you down — you will stop to look at things, which is rather the point.

Then walk it slowly. Take the loop in the direction that puts the sun behind you on the return leg, pause at the biggest tree you pass, and note one thing on the map that you will come back for in another season. A wood read once in May is not the same wood in November, and a gentle route walked four times a year becomes something rarer than a day out: a place you know.