Theres’s a little corner of the Forest that you will not find by accident. It isn’t on a main road, and it doesn’t give you a short cut to anywhere that you may wish to visit. It doesn’t have a community hall, shop, place of worship or pub. It has narrow roads, and has some residences, mostly set back from the road and hidden by the high trees and hedges which protect the buildings and obscure the dramatic views of the river far below and the low range of hills on the other side of the river.

St Briavels Common is an isolated area with a scattered and small population which you are unlikely to pass through on the way from somewhere to somewhere else. That is, unless you are in St Briavels, and are familiar with the myriad lanes which might take you to Brockweir.

There are a lot of dead ends and confusing road junctions that might mislead you on this potentially confusing journey through the Common, which was the home of writer and philosopher Philip Toynbee and his short lived Hippie commune in the 1970s , and birthplace of the cricketer William Midwinter who had the unique distinction of playing for England against Australia and Australia against England. I keep on intending to set up a campaign to get a memorial or at least a plaque celebrating this unique cricketing mercenary at St Briavels sports field. But I never quite get round to it. Eventually you might reach the Wye at Brockweir, but it might be simpler to drive straight along the A466 to Hewelsfield and take the road from the crossroads straight down to Brockweir.

But it’s not St Briavels Common that I’m writing about. After over 50 years in the Forest, I’ve just discovered Blakeney Hill. You don’t go through Blakeney Hill on the way from anywhere to anywhere else. No dual nationality sports people or hippie communes there. Just remote, mysterious wooded country lanes, with occasional grand views over the River Severn and across to the scenic low hills of the south Cotswolds.

There are lanes leading off to unseen Blakeney Hill residences. The lanes have special names, like ‘Hitchins’, ‘Highfield’, and my favourite ‘Loiterpin’, an exotic name that I haven’t been able to find a derivation for, in spite of consultation with Google. ‘Loiterpin’ is an exclusive title for a remote lane which features a forest travel agency. In the 19th Century it had alternative spellings like ‘Loibspin’, ‘Loveterpin’ and ‘Loiterper’. Although interesting, these exotic names cast no light on the derivation of the title of a secluded forest track.