Parkend, Cannop Ponds and Forest of Dean

The forest is criss-crossed by rough-surfaced roads. Their obvious value to the Forestry Commission belies their origin; many were built by the United States Army during World War Two to facilitate the movement of ammunition, offering safety from aerial observation as the forest was a major munitions store. A pleasant walk along a path from one such road leads to the Cannop Ponds. Higher Cannop Pond is a valuable wildfowl refuge — this and a lower pond to the south were created in the 1820s as reservoirs. The head of water they built up powered a massive waterwheel, 51 feet in diameter, which worked blast furnaces at Parkend.

Beyond the adjoining road, the walk plunges into a plantation of fast-growing conifers. The view from a clearing near the top of Barnhills Plantation reveals forest as far as the eye can see. The route emerges from the trees at the lip of Bixslade Quarries, disused for several years. One quarry is now producing stone again. Keep a close eye on the great slabs and spoil heaps as you pass, and you may be repaid with finds of fossilised trees, coral, and shells.

The undressed stone is today carried to stoneworks by lorry. Until 1946, a horse-drawn tramway served this function. Its route, down lonely Bixslade, is still marked by the stone-block sleepers to which iron rails were once bolted.

Halfway down Bixslade, a forest road leads off to a tiny coal mine. This is a "gale", worked by a handful of "freeminers". In order to be granted freemining privileges by the Crown's representatives in the Forest of Dean, "the Gaveller", the men must be locally born residents and have worked in one of the forest's major pits which were in their heyday around the middle of the last century.

The trail of stone sleepers ends at a long-established stoneworks, which is still busy dressing locally hewn stone for use throughout Britain. Towards its end, the route enters one of the best remaining tracts of broadleaved woods, Nagshead Plantation. Many of the trees are around 250 years old and are part of an important RSPB bird sanctuary. A small information centre provides advice and guidance for visitors. From the woods, you return to Parkend along a disused trackbed of the Great Western Railway.

Acknowledgment: Text derived from the Out and Out Series; Discovering the Countryside on Foot. Pictures courtesy of Wikipedia.