GreenWood Forest Park, Felinheli, and Coed-y-Brenin visitor centre, Dolgellau, made it on to the Green Travel List alongside enterprises in Ibiza, Ethiopia and New Zealand which all have one thing in common, their enthusiasm for environmentally-sustainable tourism.

"The aim is to help travellers find a greener holiday," said Richard Hammond of greentraveller.co.uk.

He explained that the recently published list does not single out individual winners: "Instead the idea is to provide a comprehensive list of a wide range of travel and tourism companies who have convinced us that sustainability is at the heart of their business."

Stephen Bristow, owner of the GreenWood Forest Park, has had his business's carbon footprint in mind since the 1990s when constructing their main building out of locally-sourced green oak.

He's also a firm believer in the visitors using their own energy to power the park, as they do on the people-powered roller-coaster.

"It's the only one in the world that generates more power than it uses," said Stephen of the ride, which uses a combination of funicular-railway technology and gravity to get up some speed.

"The visitors walk up a hill, get in a cabin on rails where their weight drives them down and in turn, pulls the coaster cars up the hill.

"So they walk back up the hill to get in the coaster cars and we give them a push. It may sound complicated, but it only takes four minutes and works really well."

The park also uses recycled slate on the paths and rainwater to flush the toilets. But Stephen always thinks they could do better.

"There are always things we should be doing," he admitted.

"The kitchen waste goes to landfill because of the rules and regulations. You can only get past them by buying a very expensive machine.

"And we often have one-off environmental costs when we install things. The new play barn has a lot of plastic in it, but the equipment has a long lifespan, so the environmental cost is spread over ten years.

"But we would be interested in generating our own electricity."

Locally-sourced wood was also used to build Coed y Brenin's visitor centre in a bid to blend into the environment, have low visual impact and be based on a footprint that would be as small as possible.

Heated by a woodchip boiler, the centre gets all its water from its very own borehole and recycles all waste by way of a peat bio-filter system.

Forestry Commission Wales recreation manager John Taylor, who looks after the centre, said: "The sustainability of the centre and its low carbon footprint was uppermost in our minds when we designed the building.

"Creating such a masterpiece in the middle of a forest was no mean achievement and we are absolutely thrilled that our efforts have been recognised by inclusion in the Green Travel List."

BBC: North West Walls