The Forest of Dean Sculpture Trail

For a guided dog friendly visit to The Forest of Dean, read our guest blogger’s Gill Travers autumn holiday adventure post.

The Sculpture Trail in The Forest of Dean is a famous, beautiful and inspiring walk. Established in 1986, this Sculpture Trail was one of the first to open in the UK and features sculptures created by artists to interpret the forest environment and the history of this very unusual landscape.

Start your adventure at Beechenhurst Lodge, where you can park all day (pay and display car park – take coins for the machines), visit the cafe, have a picnic or use the facilities. The full trail is about 4.5 miles long, if you are good at sticking to paths! Follow the purple ringed posts and direction arrows to start, you can also buy a map at Beechenhurst beforehand, which is very useful! (Maps are £1)

Whatever time of year you visit, the forest always has a magical quality to it. In spring, the forest is vibrant green and peaceful, and in the autumn, the colours are particularly spectacular! Finding all the sculptures is so much fun, the highlight for us is the 15ft stained glass window suspended from the tree canopy enabling visitors to walk underneath.

The majority of the trail has gravel embedded paths so is reasonably accessible but depending on the time of year some sections were quite deep mud – so if you have mobility difficulties or are planning on using a pushchair I would wait a couple of days after rain before trying this route. Some sculptures can be accessed with a power assisted wheelchair.

After, you can explore other forest walks such as Mallards Pike Lake, Cannop Ponds or Symonds Yat.

Please note, that there are wild boar are in The Forest of Dean, so please keep dogs close and on the paths to be safe.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Arlo (@arlo_the_dalmatian_)