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Photo: Gareth James, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
This 4½-mile line runs through beautiful woodland and countryside. Five stations along the way give you time to explore the local area.
The Dean Forest Railway is a 4+1⁄4-mile (6.8 km) long heritage railway that runs between Lydney and Parkend in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, England.
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The site was archaeologically excavated in the 1920s by Sir Mortimer Wheeler, with the assistance of J.R.R. Tolkien.
Most mining heritage reflects big industrial enterprises, but in the Forest of Dean it was more like prospecting in the Yukon: residents can mine their own claim, a right enshrined in law in 1838. This led to a plethora of small drift mines for coal and iron ore, and Hopewell is one of the few remaining. The tour takes you down into the seam, mind your head.
Museum in an old watermill demonstrating forest trades such as charcoal-making, and the "free-mining" heritage as at Hopewell.