A NEW guide to help ramblers find Britain's secret woods is published today.

And the atlas, which highlights areas of Forestry Commission land, identifies three East Lancashire woodland areas.

The public are free to roam over almost all Forestry Commission land - if they can discover where it is.

Paddy Tipping MP, president of Nottinghamshire Ramblers, said: "Their woods cover more than two million acres. They are owned by the public and open to the public.

"Yet for the past ten years their location has been a secret. "In the mid-1980s all information about commission land was dropped from popular and commercially available Ordnance Survey maps."

Since then thousands of acres have been lost to public access as a result of a sales programme.

"Many woods still remain public but their whereabouts has become more and more like a state secret."

Three Forestry Commission areas in Lancashire included in the guide are Grindleton Fell, Beatrix Fell near Dunsop Bridge and Holden Moor near Stocks reservoir, Slaidburn.

The guide is being distributed to libraries and walking clubs free.

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