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City & Village Tours: 0845 812 5000 info@cityandvillagetours.com
The great primeval Royal Forest of Dean is a fairy
tale Queen of Forests where witches live, miners are
free and sheep have badgers. A triangle of ancient
woodland bounded by the Rivers Wye and Severn
and stretching for 27,000 acres this is the forest that
inspired the magical imaginations of both
JRR Tolkein and JK Rowling. Anglo-Saxon kings
hunted here and after the Norm
an invasion it became the second largest area under
Forest Law after The New Forest. The vast extent of
land under Forest Law was much curtailed in bound-
ary revisions as a result of the Great Perambulation
of 1300. The Forest of Dean is our greatest oak
forest after Lord Nelson ordered huge numbers of
trees to be built for warships. By the time the oaks
grew iron ships had replaced wooden ones.
The Forest of Dean, rich in coal and iron, natural
resources attracted the Romans who took the iron
ore to
Blestium
(Monmouth) where it was made into
weapons.
"Freeminers"
is a title dating back to
mediaeval times and given to Foresters who earned
the right to mine personal plots known as gales.
Legend claims that King Edward II (1307-27) first
bestowed
“freemining rights”
on the Foresters as a
reward to the Dean miners for tunnelling under the
town walls of Berwick-upon-Tweed to help break a
siege.
The green canopy of forest ends suddenly in
the bright sunshine of Symonds Yat Rock, the site of
a 2,000-year-old fort atop a 400ft-high cliff. The Wye
Valley is extraordinary: Symonds Yat East with its
backdrop of hanging beech woods is the kind of
riverside hamlet that makes Americans swoon.
This is border country, fought over for centuries by
the English and the Welsh.
Our tour of The Wye Valley & The Royal Forest of
Dean is a feast of wonderful scenery all day long with
a River Wye Cruise and tea and shortbread at a local
hotel included in the tour fee. It’s an ideal day for
groups who like to see a lot without walking too far.
Newbury, Oxford, Basingstoke and Bracknell are all
within a two-hour coach drive of the Severn Bridge
where our guide hops on your coach at 10-00am to
drive to Chepstow on the edge of the forest to buy
morning refreshments at 10-30am.
The myth and legend of the Forest of Dean is fun to
discover in the company of an entertaining guide.
Verderers first introduced by King Canute to guard
the
'vert'
and the '
venison'
are still appointed on a salary
of a doe and a buck a year. They can still impose the
death penalty for poaching but it must be carried out
on a gibbet long since mislaid so that’s that for the
hangings!
The Wye Valley & The Royal Forest of Dean