Nature and access

Where's the wild near you?

Natural England, Natural Resources Wales and NatureScot each map their nation's nature reserves, country parks, Sites of Special Scientific Interest, ancient woods, trails and protected landscapes. This page reads whichever register your postcode falls in and finds what is within two, five or ten kilometres, nearest first, with a link to each site's own page where the register has one.

  • Reserves & SSSIs
  • Ancient woodland
  • Access land, trails & landscapes

How this works

The postcode’s country picks the register. In England the page asks Natural England’s open map services for local and national nature reserves, country parks, SSSIs, the revised ancient woodland inventory, open access land under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act, the National Trails, the King Charles III England Coast Path, the National Parks and the National Landscapes. In Wales it asks Natural Resources Wales’s layers on DataMapWales for the same designations, the Wales Coast Path and the National Parks and AONBs; the Welsh ancient woodland inventory has no site names, so it is counted by category. In Scotland it asks NatureScot’s open data for reserves, country and regional parks, SSSIs, the Ancient Woodland Inventory and wild land areas, and the Scottish Government’s spatial data for the National Parks and National Scenic Areas; Scotland needs no access-land map because the right of responsible access covers most land. Sites split into parcels are shown once, at the nearest parcel; landscapes too big for a centre distance to mean anything are searched by ring, so they read as inside or within so many kilometres. Answers are cached for a day. Northern Ireland and the Crown Dependencies keep their own registers, linked from the page for postcodes there.

Sources

  • Natural England Open Data Geoportal (© Natural England copyright; contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right). Open Government Licence v3.
  • Natural Resources Wales layers on DataMapWales (contains Natural Resources Wales information © Natural Resources Wales and Database Right; contains Ordnance Survey data, licence AC0000849444, Crown Copyright and Database Right). Open Government Licence v3.
  • NatureScot Open Data on ArcGIS Online (© NatureScot; contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right). Open Government Licence v3.
  • Scottish Government spatial data: National Parks and National Scenic Areas (© Scottish Government, contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right). Open Government Licence v3.
  • Postcodes: postcodes.io / ONS Postcode Directory (OGL v3).

For information only. A designation is not a right of access; follow the signs and the Countryside Code, or in Scotland the Scottish Outdoor Access Code.