Forest of Dean Sculpture Trail

Lovely trail. We have done this a couple of times. This time we were pushing a buggy around. Dog friendly, buggy friendly. There are some mediocre sculptures, but some fantastic ones as well. We were quite quick walking around and we did it in 3 hours. If you were taking your time, I would think it would take 4-5 hours to do the loop

Lovely forest trail. Amazing for a free day out, just pay parking. The trail is pretty easy to follow, occasionally requiring you to double back on yourself. You can follow the purple arrows for the full walk or yellow arrows to take a shortcut. The short cut does cut out most of the trail though. We followed the full trail and took around 3 hours to compete.

I recently visited with my dog and family as part of a week long stay in the Forest of Dean. A good 2 hour walk, meandering through the forest looking at a variety of different sculptures. I would recommend that you download the map and audio descriptions to give the stories behind each sculpture. Art is subjective and sculpture, even more so. Some of the works are great, and others are quite abstract. But the combination of walks and works of art is quite an interesting concept. Look to the trees too as there are some bonus pieces which are quite original. Plenty of pay for parking, a visitor centre where a paper map can be picked up, toilet facilities, and drinks, and ice cream can be purchased on site. Now... the negative, and the reason why I have given 4*. As a dog owner, walker, and visitor to the area, I was somewhat dismayed by the lack of respect and responsibility from fellow dog owners. On the trail, apart from some rubbish from snacks consumed, there were at least 30 dog bags discarded along the route. It beggars belief as to why these people went to the bother of cleaning up after their pet and then thought,'I'll just leave it for the poo-bag fairy to pick up.' Either there needs to be appropriate bins installed around the walking route, and/or there needs to be repeat signage telling people to be respectful and responsible and keep the bags and their rubbish with them until they come across a bin in which to deposit it. The forest is there for all to enjoy. Be respectful, be responsible, leave only footprints, and take only memories.

Some interesting sculptures in lovely woodland but they are very far apart. The signage is very poor, there could be a small plaque with details, or at least an id on the waypoints, but you should download the map and bumf about the exhibits before you go, brush up on your orienteering skills too because there is no info on the trail and bad reception in some places. Take no notice of them saying you'll be around in two hours, we took over three and missed a bunch because parking is paid in advance. You'd have to be super fit and just glance at the sculptures as you yomp around on the clock if you don't want to risk a penalty notice on your windscreen, if that's what they do. The woods are splendid though, it's a lovely spot and it is well worth a visit but the trail is not well organised so plan carefully. And they don't have fridge magnets.

Wondrous, thought-provoking sculptures are uncovered on this delightful trail through the magical Forest of Dean. Parking is not cheap at the Beechenhurst Lodge Car park but it is easy to access the start of the trail, purchase a cheap map of the route and use the toilets and cafe too. We managed about 15 of the sculptures with a group of children (4-15) and mature grown-ups in about 3 hours on a beautiful, if slightly overcast, day. The only downside is that the route is not always clearly marked and we had a couple of unscheduled detours. GoApe is also conveniently located at this location. We returned on a different day so our younger family members could spend a joyous hour romping around in the tree tops

If you enjoy a walk in the forest then whichever trail you choose you'll have an enjoyable time. Probably 2 hours to do the complete loop of the sculpture trail. Some of the sculptures require you to walk back yourself to rejoin the trail. Parking is from £3.50-8.50 and is payable on arrival, cash or card. There are a couple of car parks you could park up for free and pick up the trail from there.

Google Maps will take you to a centre with a cafe, toilets and picnic tables where you pay to park. However, there are free car parks close to the trail. We didn't rush and stopped to eat a sandwich, and it took us about 3.5 hours to walk the trail. It's approximately 5 miles long and very clearly marked. It's worth downloading the leaflet which has details of the sculptures and a map before you leave home as we had virtually no signal the whole time we were there!!

Lovely walk in the Forest of Dean, the sculptures are amazing, gets very busy at the weekend with good weather! The café had a queue out the door, but we had brought our own stuff, toilets are well kept.