Mowbray: Heritage Forest and Horse Racing

Mowbray offers two clear starting points for your trip: the Heritage Forest, with its trails, gardens and recreational facilities, and horse racing. When choosing a hotel destination based on your interests, you can weigh up whether outdoor activities, Tasmanian plants or thoroughbred racing should be the focus of your stay. The differences between the circuit trail, recreational trails and racing can help you organise these priorities around your travel dates.

Heritage Forest: trails, gardens and recreational activities

The Heritage Forest Trail is an easy, 2.9 km gravel circuit, suitable for family walks and bike rides. Its length, surface and circuit layout give you specific details to help with planning. The Heritage Forest also has more than 5 km of recreational trails suitable for cycling, running and walking. This gives you different criteria to consider: the trail is explicitly described as easy and suitable for families, while the recreational trails offer running as an additional activity. If you’re mainly looking for an easy circuit to enjoy with the family, the trail is a specific option. If you’d also like to run, include the Forest’s recreational trails in your plans.

The Heritage Forest also offers different botanical highlights. Its arboretum includes all 27 of Tasmania’s eucalyptus species. The Australian Plant Society Native Plant Garden features flowering plants and shrubs from the Tasmanian bushland. This gives you two distinct interests to consider: a specific collection of eucalyptus species and a garden with bushland plants. If you’re choosing your trip based on botanical themes, these details can help you decide what to focus on during your visit.

Other Forest facilities include picnic and barbecue areas, outdoor exercise equipment and a reflection trail. There’s an off-leash area for dogs, as well as a beginner bike track and a native plant garden. A play area features a 40 m zipline and a large thylacine sculpture. These facilities cater to different interests, including exercise, spending time outdoors, plants and play. You can decide which of these facilities to include in your planned activities.

Horse racing and Mowbray’s history

Horse racing has a long history in Mowbray. After brief, temporary ventures in Newnham and Invermay, it found a long-term home in Mowbray. Thoroughbred racing events in Launceston are held at the Ladbrokes Racing Centre in Mowbray. The venue is one of Tasmania’s two multi-code racing venues. Mowbray therefore has both a direct connection to racing events and a longer-standing association with horse racing.

If you’d like to plan your trip around a race, check the event calendar for your travel dates, as race dates vary. This gives you two distinct priorities to consider when choosing a destination. The Heritage Forest offers trails, botanical highlights and other recreational facilities; a visit focused on racing depends on the event dates. If a race is the reason for your trip, confirm the date before setting your travel dates. If trails, plants or the Forest’s facilities are your main focus, you can use these features as separate criteria when looking for a hotel in Mowbray.

Discover more destinations: Rosevears, Hadspen, Legana, Newnham

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