IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Hope Mansell, ROSS-ON-WYE, HR9 5TW

The track runs close to the dismantled railway line known as Euroclydon/Hawthorns/Puddlebrook, depending on which source of information is used. The line passes through Hom Wood on a steep hillside which is visible on the left of this picture. The Herefordshire/Gloucestershire county border also passes through this woodland.

The patch of woodland to the right is the southern tip of Lea Bailey Inclosure.

The footpath heads SW. At the farm buildings you can either pass through a gate, then swing north towards Hope Mansell, or take a track off to the left then find an unmarked footpath which climbs steeply through Hom Wood and up to Euroclydon on the summit, crossing the trackbed of the dismantled railway.

Lea Bailey Inclosure; despite the date of 10th April, this shows the belated spring of 2018.

Bridge Marker in the northeast parapet of a bridge on Hawthorns Road over the disused Mitcheldean Road and Forest of Dean Junction Railway. Hope Mansell parish. Inscribed G.W.R. possibly above S D C. The bridge is on a railway line built c.1874 by different contractors for the Mitcheldean Road and Forest of Dean Junction Railway Company. This company was absorbed by the GWR in 1880, who completed the line soon after. The stone is thought to mark the Great Western Railway's ownership of, or responsibility for, the bridge. The vertical groove next to the stone is unexplained but might show where a bridge weight plate, e.g. https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/6463518, was fixed to the parapet. Milestone Society National ID: HF_HOPEMA01br

The road to Drybrook crosses the Severn and Wye railway which closed to passenger service in 1929.

I say "unused" rather than "disused" because this line was never opened. The picture shows a bridge carrying the Drybrook road over the course of the old (deep breath) Mitcheldean Road & Forest of Dean Junction Railway (MR&FDJR) which spent all its capital on ink to write down its name before turning to the Great Western Railway for help in completing their line, which was intended to link up the GWR's route from Bullo Pill with the same company's Gloucester-Hereford line at Mitcheldean Road. Anyway, the GWR did indeed finish the line (including this handsome stone bridge), but never opened it for traffic other than a few test trains; the rails on the section north of Drybrook were lifted in 1917 and never relaid. The lengths of rail in the foreground are part of the nearby Lea Bailey Light Railway, a narrow gauge line built on the old formation.