Ride through History

You're Riding Through 200 Years of History
 

Most people come to Cannop for the trails. Fewer realise that nearly every metre of them runs over one of the most industrial landscapes in Britain — and that the smooth, fast tracks you're railing were laid down not for bikes, but for coal.
 

The Cycle Centre itself sits on a colliery. The car park, café and trailhead occupy the former site of Cannop Colliery, one of the Forest's deep coal mines. You're not riding near the history — you're parked on top of it.
 

The Family/Colliers Trail is a railway. That wide, fast, gently graded track is the old Severn & Wye Railway line — which is exactly why it flows so beautifully and never gets too steep. As you ride it, you pass the sites of former stations at Drybrook Road, Cannop Wharf and Speech House.

The spoil heaps became viewpoints. New Fancy — now a peaceful viewpoint and goshawk-spotting spot — is built on the waste heap of the New Fancy colliery. The forest has quietly reclaimed its own industrial scars.
 

Look out for the old collieries as you ride: remnants survive at Foxes Bridge, Lightmoor and New Fancy. Lightmoor was once one of the largest pits in the Forest, working from 1841 and producing up to 900 tons of coal a day by 1906.
 

And the Freeminers Trail is named for something real. Free Miners are a genuine, centuries-old institution of the Forest of Dean — men with the ancient right to mine coal here, a tradition still legally recognised today. The trail's name isn't decoration; it's local heritage.
 

So next time you're catching your breath at the top of a climb — have a look around. The forest you're riding was shaped by iron, coal and steam long before it was shaped for bikes.