The Forest Way lies within the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in the heart of the picturesque East Sussex countryside with the Ashdown Forest lying to the south. It takes the route of a disused railway line and now provides an important habitat for wildlife forming a ‘green corridor’ through the upper valley of the River Medway. You might spot dragonflies, newts, swallows, badger tracks, deer, or foxes. 

The French called this area “bad lands to cross” as cliffs, sinkholes and creeks make this terrain very challenging compared to the surrounding plains, especially when wet and muddy. The same sandstone, clay and shale layers that make this area difficult to cross also create colorful and fascinating formations not found in many other areas. The North Dakota Badlands are largely centered around the canyon or valley created by the Little Missouri River.

This route is an attempt to showcase the best of Ann Arbor trails in one loop(ish). I hope this route catches on and I think it would be so great to see some fast people in the area take a crack at this. I had a couple main goals with this route:

1. Hit as much trail as possible. This route is about 14 miles of trail and 2.5ish miles of pavement (which I don't think is too bad for a loop in a small city). This route also does a lot of perimeters of parks, so you see the different parts of each park.

The route is intended to traverse most of the Las Trampas Ridge, which is one of the major ridges in the East Bay of northern California. One the east side of the ridge there is Diablo Valley, which is quite suburban and developed, and the west side is Las Trampas Ridge Regional Wilderness (https://www.ebparks.org/parks/las_trampas/), which is a large and scenic wilderness park. There are views to the east of Mount Diablo and to the west of the Oakland Hills.