Name: College Woods
Address: Durham, NH
Resources: Walking trail only, no interpretation.
Rules: Dawn to dusk, four seasons. Bicycles allowed. No swimming, fishing, boating or skating on reservoir waters.
Parking: Yes, limited at a number of locations along the trail.
Dogs: On leash.
Directions: Arsenault Memorial Entrance down Mill Road or enter on Waterworks Rd. behind Field House fields, near Train bridge below Pettee Hall.

Web site: Campus Woods at UNH Dept of Natural Resources

Woods are woods, and if you like walking in them, you’ll like this university tree farm. It feels, in spots, like the pine tree trail that slopes down to the Salmon Falls river in South Berwick. In other spots it reminds us of the Bellamy River walk in Dover along a sluggish, slightly tangy waterway. But College woods, like the University of NH itself, is bigger, and longer and deeper than most others. From the "Arsenault" Memorial entranceway, we wandered for two hours in 85-degree summer weather and saw only three other couples, all of whom were riding on fat-tire bicycles. Traffic is light when school is out of session, most beautiful in the fall, and beautiful after the first snowfall of winter.

We found the criss-crossing largely unmarked paths confusing to navigate. The College Woods map, available online, is surprisingly hard to use, considering it comes from a university. It is difficult to measure distances or tell one path from another, so the walker relies on bridges and dams and key manmade features to guess at where you are. Generally the path is smooth and wide, but there are steep and soggy places even in midsummer. If you forget the bug spray in summer and spring, turn back immediatley. Your life isn’t worth a nickel in there.