Saturday in the Forest of Dean

There were signs in the Forest of Dean warning of wild boars and for a moment, I felt like I was in Lost.

I followed the trail through the woods, looking out for sculptures. The first sculpture I came across was a giant chair, missing the seat component, so perhaps not really a chair at all. The description on the website says: "With its irregular stance it is also reminiscent of a strange animal in one of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, striding across the landscape."

Symonds Yat was the next destination. On top of Symonds Yat Rock, I gazed into the distance trying to catch a glimpse of a peregrine falcon, perching in a faraway tree. It was windy and I held on tightly to a print-out my dad had sent. The views were magnificent and I wondered if they had changed at all since he looked out from the same rock, more than 30 years ago.

A brief visit to Ross-on-Wye led me to conclude that the button museum had closed. I did find a sign, that once said "Button Museum", but it had been coloured over, with a warning, "Don't drink from the mainstream."

Scowles, Mazes and Caves

Puzzlewood was the first place I visited on Sunday and it was very muddy. I wandered between the moss-covered scowles and gnarled trees, peering into unexpected gullies, and over little bridges, and it all felt somehow magical. Apparently it may have been an inspiration for Tolkien's Middle Earth.

There was a shower of hailstones that day.

When the hail had stopped, I headed to the Jubilee Maze. I got a little bit lost, but eventually emerged to find the museum of mazes. I read about labyrinths, the Sator Square, palindromes being used as cures and protection as the devil would become confused, locations of other mazes in the UK, and other various interesting maze related facts.

King Arthur's Cave was the next destination on the agenda. Woolly rhinoceros bones had been found there and there are the usual tales about King Arthur surrounding the cave also. I crept inside the cave and looked for bats and then instead for a geocache. My dad had printed out details of one near to the caves and had given me a Garmin to use to find it, but it was my mum that eventually found the tupperware box.