VISITORS to the Forest of Dean Sculpture Trail this summer will be treated to eight new pieces of artwork, if new plans get the go-ahead. 

The sculpture trail, which starts and ends at Beechenhurst Lodge near Coleford, attracts more than 300,000 people every year. 

And trustees hope that new temporary sculptures will bring more visitors as the UK starts to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic. 

The plans, which have been submitted to the Forest of Dean District Council, say the trail will run alongside the existing route. 

The idea is to create a shorter, more accessible, fun and family-orientated trail called Forest to Forest – and it will be in place for up to six months. 

The new sculptures have been designed by different artists and include arms hugging trees, a poem cut into a steel cylinder surrounding a tree and a wicker bench shelter made in the form of a badger. 

There will also be native wildflower paintings hanging from the trees, dozens of bright red bugs made from garden hand trowels crawling up tree trunks and lightweight modules suspended from the canopy.

The new trail will also have an undulating canopy made of 1600 recycled plastic bottles filled with coloured water and several giant colourful totem poles. 

None of the installations will be fenced off and there will be no description or signage so visitors will be expected to make their own judgement of what the sculptures represent.

Consultants working on the scheme say there will be no clearance of trees, shrubs or ground fauna to install them and the plans have been designed to make efficient use of the existing resources 

The Forest of Dean Sculpture Trail was originally established in 1986 thanks to the shared vision of Martin Orrom, the then forestry and environment officer for the Forestry Commission, Jeremy Rees, the founding director of the Arnolfini gallery in Bristol and Rupert Martin, curator at the Arnolfini. 

The brief given to the artists who created the original sculpture trail was that the works should respond intellectually, historically, physically and conceptually to the particularity of the Forest of Dean. 

Planners are expected to consider the scheme for the new temporary trail by June 16, 2021.