Other in Gloucestershire

Clearwell Caves is an ancient iron ore mine in the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire, with evidence of mining activity stretching back over 4,500 years to the Bronze Age, making it one of the oldest and most continuously worked mineral workings in Britain. The cave system extends to nine chambers open to visitors, revealing the geological formations, historical mining equipment and evidence of the various periods of extraction that have taken place on this site across millennia. The caves are managed as a visitor attraction with guided tours exploring the natural cave features and the mining history of the Forest of Dean. The Forest of Dean is one of the most historically significant mining and industrial landscapes in England, with iron and coal extraction dating back to Roman times and a distinctive forest culture that developed around the free-mining rights granted to local inhabitants. Clearwell village and the surrounding forest provide an attractive setting for this remarkable heritage site.

Puzzlewood in the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire is an ancient woodland of genuinely unique character, a landscape so strange and otherworldly in appearance that it has served as a filming location for some of the biggest productions in contemporary film and television. The twisted roots, tangled branches, deep mossy gullies and criss-crossing paths of the wood create an atmosphere simultaneously beautiful and slightly disorienting that has inspired writers, filmmakers and visitors for centuries. The geological origins of Puzzlewood's distinctive appearance lie in a combination of iron ore mining activity that took place from the Roman period until relatively recently, and the natural geological feature known as scowles. Scowles are irregular cavities and gullies formed in the limestone bedrock through the dissolving action of acidic water along fault lines, a process of chemical weathering that has produced the deep channels, rocky outcrops and irregular terrain that characterises the woodland. Over these natural landforms the miners excavated further in their search for iron ore deposited in the limestone, creating a landscape of human and natural excavation now covered by centuries of moss, tree root and vegetation. The result is a woodland where the ordinary rules of orientation are subtly suspended. Paths that appear to head in one direction curve unexpectedly, rises and falls occur where none might be expected on flat-looking ground, and the dense canopy creates pools of deep shade in which the scale and direction of the landscape are difficult to read. This quality made Puzzlewood the perfect location for the otherworldly forest scenes in Doctor Who, Merlin, Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Jack the Giant Slayer, among other productions. The privately managed woodland is open to visitors and the approximately one-mile circuit through the core of the site can be walked at a comfortable pace in around an hour, though most visitors linger considerably longer. The path leads through the most spectacular sections of the scowles, past ancient trees and over the remains of Roman iron workings. The woodland is particularly atmospheric in autumn when the leaf colour and lower light conditions intensify the sense of ancient enchantment. The Forest of Dean surrounding Puzzlewood is itself an exceptional area for walking and cycling, with over 100 miles of cycle trails and extensive footpaths through the ancient royal forest.

Westonbirt, the National Arboretum, near Tetbury in Gloucestershire is the finest collection of trees and shrubs in Britain, a 600-acre landscape of organised planting and natural woodland containing approximately 2,500 species and cultivars from across the world. The arboretum was founded in 1829 by Robert Stayner Holford, a wealthy landowner who devoted his life and a large part of his fortune to collecting and planting trees on his Westonbirt estate, creating over fifty years of intensive planting the framework of the landscape that visitors explore today. The oldest section of the arboretum, the Old Arboretum, preserves the Victorian planting philosophy of arranging trees in broad curving rides that create long views through the collection while allowing individual specimens sufficient space to develop their natural form. The mature trees in this section, now approaching 150 to 200 years old, have reached sizes that reveal the full grandeur of species that are often seen only as young trees in parks and gardens. The giant specimens of plane, maple, lime, tulip tree and oak create a canopy experience quite unlike anything available in most British gardens. Westonbirt is particularly celebrated for its autumn colour, which transforms the arboretum into one of the most spectacular seasonal landscapes in England from mid-October through November. The Japanese maple collection in Acer Glade and the wide range of North American hardwoods throughout the Old Arboretum produce a kaleidoscope of red, gold, orange and yellow that draws visitors in large numbers through the autumn season. Night-time illumination events in autumn extend the visiting hours and create a quite different atmosphere in the arboretum after dark. The Silk Wood section of the arboretum, a more naturalistic woodland managed for both tree collections and native wildlife, provides a contrasting experience of mature English woodland with added botanical interest throughout the year.