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Leisure activities and outdoor recreation are valuable aspects of people's everyday life. With more people living in cities than ever, access to natural areas is becoming a more relevant issue, and many protected nature areas serve both to preserve biodiversity and make nature accessible to a wider public. Living at a distance to nature increases the need for transportation and previous research show that travel connected to leisure activities, and to outdoor activities in particular, is carried out by car to a higher extent than other travel. With increasing climate change, a shift towards more sustainable transportation is needed. While much research and work has been put into shifting everyday travel to public transport, there is a lack of research and a bigger resistance to change when it comes to leisuretravel.

This study investigates the possibility of traveling with bus to nature reserves around Umeå, Sweden, by combining public transport data with data on nature reserves. The analyses are carried out in ArcGIS Pro, using Network Analyst models Route and Service area for six different times on a Saturday between 10.00 am and 11.40 am. The results show that, out of 69 nature reserves in a 50 km radius from the city centre, 24 are reachable within 90 minutes and ten of them within 60 minutes. Further, the study discusses the possibility to exercise popular outdoor activities in these nature reserves. The most common activities are walking and hiking and the findings show that six of the ten nature reserves have roads, paths or tracks that make these activities possible.