Forest bathing at Butterdean Wood

Butterdean Wood covers 42 hectares just south of Gladsmuir, between Tranent and Haddington. It has been cleared and regrown several times over the centuries, was replanted in the 1960s, and narrowly escaped being felled for farmland in the 1980s before the Woodland Trust bought it in 1988. Today it is a mix of conifers with ash, birch, oak and Scots pine and a good number of veteran trees, gradually being turned back into native woodland. Bird's nest orchids flower here between May and July, and green woodpeckers and nuthatches are about.

Park at the council car park at the northern end. There are over five kilometres of paths, mostly flat: a shorter surfaced trail that suits wheelchairs and buggies in dry weather, a longer unsurfaced waymarked route, and plenty of informal paths for wandering off the main lines. Sleeper bridges cross the drainage ditches, and it gets muddy after rain. In the western section you will pass fenced, capped mineshafts from old coal workings.