Students from a number of American universities in the mid-west states visited the Forest of Dean as part of an exploration of the Harry Potter phenomenon. J K Rowling spent many childhood years in Tutshill and was clearly influenced by that experience when she used the Forest of Dean as an important refuge for Harry and his friends when they were hiding from the forces of evil. He even found an extremely important wizard artifact in a pond in the Forest!
The students also visited London, Oxford, Edinburgh, and the Warner Brothers Harry Potter experience in Hertfordshire. The Forest, however, helped them contextualize the books.
The guides met the students who were driven from Chepstow, through Tutshill, around the Forest — stopping for a slap-up meal in the Orepool! — to Symonds Yat, via Berry Hill. At Berry Hill, the guides spoke enthusiastically about the Forest’s original Potter — the playwrite Dennis Potter — whose plays electrified the nation. After a visit to Yat Rock, the group went to New Fancy, from where they then hiked to Cannop Ponds. From Cannop they came back to stay at the most haunted building in the Forest — St. Briavel’s Castle, now a youth hostel.
They were then treated to a presentation by the Forest of Dean & Wye Valley tour guides, rounding rounding up everything they had discussed and seen.
