Sweden
Tyresta National Park
Old-growth forest on Stockholm's doorstep, where pines predate Columbus.
Tyresta holds old-growth forest within reach of Stockholm's public transport — Scots pines four centuries old standing on rocky ground too poor to farm and too awkward to log. The forest was simply left alone. The result is a fragment of primeval Scandinavia with suburbs at its edges and silence at its heart.
Tyresta National Park protects some 2,000 hectares of ancient boreal forest barely twenty kilometres from central Stockholm. Its oldest Scots pines have stood over four hundred years, spared because thin soil over granite made the land worthless to everyone but the trees. The park entrance is a cluster of red wooden farm buildings with a naturum at its heart — a gateway before the marked loops. Trails run from short interpreted walks to full-day circuits past forest lakes like Bylsjön; one section still carries the scars of a major 1999 fire, ancient forest and raw regrowth within the same walk. It is wilderness that runs on a city travel card.
Solo
Walking alone through four-hundred-year-old forest on the capital's doorstep — the solitude feels stolen rather than arranged.
Family
Short interpreted paths from the farm-village gateway and a lake to picnic beside — wilderness at child scale.
Friends
A morning circuit to the forest lakes gives Stockholm-based groups a wilderness day without a car.
- Scots pines over four hundred years old stand twenty kilometres from Stockholm's centre.
- Thin, rocky soil saved the forest — useless for farming, it was simply left alone.
- Marked loops run from short interpreted walks to full-day forest-lake circuits.
- A red-painted farm village stands at the entrance, naturum and trail maps at its heart.
Blueberries and lingonberries line the late-summer trails — the forest feeds the walk.
A picnic by a forest lake, packed from Stockholm's food halls that morning.
Vangunu Island
Solomon Islands
A giant rat known to Zaira's forest for generations, and to science only since 2017.
Huayllay Stone Forest
Peru
Thousands of rock formations on a frozen altiplano, eroded into elephants and faces.
Mkambati Nature Reserve
South Africa
Grassland rivers fall onto empty beaches along an undeveloped Indian Ocean shore.
Tangkoko Nature Reserve
Indonesia
The world's biggest-eyed primate wakes at dusk in a forest of black macaques.
Gothenburg
Sweden
A fish market shaped like a church where the west coast's langoustine feels like sacrament.
Grövelsjön
Sweden
A mountain station beside the Norway line, whose trails cross countries before lunch.
Höga Kusten Leden
Sweden
A 130-kilometre coastal trail through the UNESCO High Coast, shelters perched above the sea.
Kungsleden (Northern Section)
Sweden
A hundred kilometres of Arctic tundra trail where the sun refuses to set for weeks.