Sherwood hits the gold standard for visitor experience 

Sherwood Forest has been awarded Visit England’s Gold Accolade after the national tourism body sampled the visitor experience at the Nottinghamshire RSPB reserve. 

The assessor highlighted the exceptional friendliness and knowledge of the team and the excellent interpretation seen throughout the site, particularly the Robin Hood themed jokes at the main car park.  

They selected the peaceful nature walks, a tasty lunch in the café and an excellent well stocked shop as more of the reserve’s strengths.  

The ‘space pebble’ in the Visitor Centre – a pebble collected from Sherwood in the 1990s by a visiting NASA employee and later taken on the Space Shuttle – was described as “surely the quirkiest and least expected part of the visit”. 

The inspector said of the overall impression: “This is huge testament to the positive changes that (Visitor Experience Manager) Jessica Dumoulin and the team have made over the past 14 months to develop and improve the visitor experience.” 

Jess Dumoulin said: “This is fantastic news for us. We pride ourselves on providing the best possible visitor experience at Sherwood Forest. We are continually looking at ways in which we can deliver a high standard in everything we do and to make improvements, whether it is the welcome our visitors receive when they arrive or the events programme we run throughout the year. 

“We have seen the return of many more international visitors in the past 12 months since the end of the pandemic and had lots of excellent feedback from families who have come to Sherwood to have a fun day out. 

“It’s a great place to learn more about the legend of Robin Hood and to connect with nature in this fabulous and incredibly rare ancient oak woodland.”   

Find out more about what you will discover at the Visitor Centre and out in the Forest.