My wife booked two nights at the Castlemaine mill holiday cottages in Lydney (forest of Dean) for my birthday. This is our first time visiting the Forest of Dean.

Me and my wife and 3.5 year old son set off on Friday at lunch time, bit later than planned. We met some delays on the road but got there around 3pm.

These are the two cottages opposite Tony and Elian’s huge house

The cottages are both self catering, both recently converted into accomadation.
Castlerag on the left – single floor, Horse Gin on the right – Horsegin has a mezzanine floor.
We stayed in Horse gin, which I have to say was very nice,very clean, modern and very cosy.

Living room area – there’s a futon which opens up to the size of a double bed, freesat tv


Bathroom


Double bed on the mezzanine


View off the mezzanine

Kitchen Dinning area

Each cottage has its own lockable shed to store your bikes in, there’s also a hose that you can use to clean your bikes.

Tony and Elaine’s huge house

What surprised us was the extras that Tony and Elaine provided:
Salt, Pepper, vinegar, Ketchup, HP sauce, Tea, Coffee, Milk, washing up liquid, torches for when its dark.
Not to mention the home made cakes and shortbread, also home made plum jam..very nice.

There’s also a gas BBQ and a webber charcoal BBQ, charcoal and GAS are also supplied.
There’s also a laundry room if you need to do any washing.

We took a 20 minute stroll through the forest to the Rising Sun Pub and all had some dinner, personally we thought the food was ok but others might find it fantastic. service was a little slow, so leave plenty of time if you walk or you might be walking back in the dark.

Saturday we popped to Tesco to stock up on lunch and get something to cook for dinner. Tesco is about 4 miles away from the cottages.

My wife made the rolls and I packed the bikes into the car.
We all had a spin around the family route at the cycle centre. This was a little tame for our son, who’s used to the blues at Swinley.
But as I didn’t know what the other trails were like I went off and did the Verderes trail. The last section of Verderers I could happily do over and over, I thought it was brilliant.
View from the trail..

We then drove up to Symonds Yat Rock to check out the view from the view point

We wanted a chance to go and see the wild boar and take our son to go and see them. So 19:30 Tony was happy to take us to a spot he’s seen them frequently.
Lucky for us they were there and strangely not that shy..

Sunday (Today) we took Tyler to go and have a ride on the Steam train, so we strolled down to Parkend station and bought our tickets.
Adults £11 children under 5 free.

All in all we had a great weekend, Tony and Elaine were brilliant, friendly and extremely helpful. They made us feel very welcome .
We thoroughly recommend staying at Castlemain Mill Holiday Cottages.