There are two bridges very close together at Saintlow Inclosure. They carry the track over wet land below, but I couldn't see why they had been built. There must have been a good reason to go to all that trouble. The track is a cycle path now though is also home to walkers, joggers and today a pack of llamas and a horse. After detouring round the saw mill we came to Lightmoor Colliery. This must have been a lovely building in it's day. It looked pretty sturdy even now despite the lack of windows and only the bare bones of a roof. The premises are still busy, but this whole area must have buzzed with industry a hundred years ago. The previous night had been very windy and a tree was down over the path and would have been impassable to a train. I wondered if these shallow rooted fir trees were here back then, but as I passed Spruce Ride I decided they probably were.

I'd driven over Dilke Bridge hundreds of times without realizing it was indeed a bridge over the old railway line. The bridge is very similar in construction to Central Bridge where we started out today. It's all stone with a low wall along the top of the bridge. We carried on north along the well defined path until it left the original track. for 1/4 mile. We stayed with the track which we extremely muddy. Some heavy machinery had been working around here and the ground was black mush. It struck me as odd when we visited Crabtree Hill Trig Point a couple of months ago that this was very flat for a trig point and completely surrounded by trees, so no line of sight could be seen to other trig points (which is the whole point of them). So these trees can't have been here when the trig was built probably in the 1930's. A nice easy stroll to the end of the Mineral loop Line at the Drybrook Road junction. We turned right and headed towards Cinderford. This town is the most industrialized in the forest and has to be my least favourite place in the area, but I guess it does have an industrial history and there were quite a maze of lines around here once.

Half way down this section we found a siding to the south. A couple of pieces of railway debris lay about. Old rotten metal cans and baths seem to be quite easy to find. We followed the Main Line for only 0.6 miles in total until we reached The Forest of Dean Branch and headed south, initially taking the wrong path. The track itself stood perched on a ridge between trees. Some trees looked too old to have grown since the railway went, but this was definitely the track. The woods soon open to and industrial area and we found what I believe was Letcher's Bridge. There were the what looked like the stone sides of a bridge with the top part missing and a large pipe running in its place. Shortly afterwards is an information board relating to Bilson Halt. The path was wide here.

There are a series of ponds to the east of the track in Linear Park, which would be a nice place to visit if not for the factories. We walked in the rain past the site of Cinderford Ironworks. This place provided heavy industry from 1795 to 1894. The tramways would have served the works for most of its life, not the railways.

Ruspidge Halt has been preserved, although there's not a huge amount there. A sign and two benches sit above the retaining wall on one side of the track and a signal and a truck on a fenced off section of track on the other side. It's great to see the first signs of preservation on my wanderings. After such a good section we crossed the B4226 and our luck immediately changed. The area is right on the edge of the forest and is built up. The track went straight into private property. We followed alongside the track in the edge of the forest, but we were climbing well above the track. Now we were stuck on the wrong side of a stream which was well and truly a river at the moment. With slight back tracking we crossed an overgrown bridge and made it down into a locked up paddock and climbed over a high corrugated iron clad gate to get back to the road. Sections here were private / semi-private, but we followed the track where possible until we got to Ruspidge Goods Yard and the track went back into the forest by a large stone marking The Blue Rock Trail. The track followed Cinderford Brook crossing it at times via bridges. We passed a disused quarry, then came to what looked like Staple Edge Halt, which is marked by a bench, though there is no halt reference.

The last place of interest for the day soon followed. At last we had found a tunnel. OK, so it was a small tunnel and it was blocked at both ends without even a door, but it was a tunnel. I couldn't figure out why it was here though. It was right at the edge of a steep hill and it should have been no problem for the track to detour round the hill. The bend wasn't too sharp. But there must have been a very good reason as this would have take a huge effort to build. Very close by is a memorial to the 5,000 sheep culled in the forest in the 2001 foot and mouth epidemic and also a picnic table and a wooden sculpture of a miner lying on a trolley.

This was the end of our trail for today. We had completed 7 miles of track today. This weekend had seen 14 miles of track and 25 miles walked in total. Bob had had a ball. Let's just hope the weather holds out for the next few weekends.