The Silent Whistle is now silent for ever. That cosy little pub was in a network of sparsely populated lanes that wind their way between the A48 and the A40 through charming settlements including Oakle Street, Northwood Green, Grange Court and Flaxley lanes between the A40 and the A48. It has now closed for good. There’s no passing trade. The Junction pub, in the same scattered area, is still going, but with restricted hours. Westbury Rugby Club used to play some of their matches just behind the Junction, and the players and referee (sometimes me) would repair to the pub for post-match refreshment. The names of these pubs reflect the mainline railway line that disturbs this otherwise tranquil area, with the Junction at the point where the now silent branch line to Ross veered off from the Gloucester to Cardiff track.

Around 30 years ago my wife and I embarked on an epic 18 month tour of all the pubs in the Forest of Dean, purely as an academic exercise of course. There were 137 pubs in the Forest area then, but this number has now sadly declined to under 100.

Some have been demolished. The Pike House at Berry Hill, and the buildings that housed the Railway and the Bridge at Cinderford and the Feathers at Lydney are no more.

Blakeney has lost the Kings Head and the Yew Tree. St Briavels has, sadly, lost the Crown, my local when I lived in St Briavels. My other local in St Briavels, the George, is now very definitely thriving. If our pub crawl had been undertaken in the 19th Century, we would have visited the half a dozen or so beer houses scattered around another charming and remote area, St Briavels Common.

Travellers no longer rest at the Travellers Rest, which was in the greater St Briavels area just beyond Mork. The Cross Keys at Tutshill was run by the genial Brian Harris, the former captain of Everton Football Club. It has now been transformed into residential property, but was a venue for St Briavels residents who commuted to Bristol or Cardiff and gathered at the pub in the early evening when I lived in St Briavels and worked in Cardiff.

The exotically named pub ‘Live and Let Live’ in Tutshill and even more exotically named ‘Help me through the World’ in Coleford are no more. At Beachley, just down the road from Tutshill was the Old Ferry Inn. This had wonderful views over the Severn estuary and was the first pub in the Forest that I visited. This pub, on the road to nowhere, could not survive the loss of the ferry after the construction of the Severn Bridge.

Further along the river was another former pub, the Old Severn Bridge with its great river views, by the railway bridge that collapsed in 1961. Another riverside inn that has not survived is the Brockweir Inn, which was once one of many pubs in the village that served the boat workers for the busy river trade from the Wye to Bristol. The A48 has lost the Victoria in Newnham and the Apple Tree in Minsterworth, but I am very happy to report that the Severn Bore pub in Minsterworth and the White Hart at Broadoak are flourishing, and are prime spots to see that extraordinary phenomenon, the mighty Severn Bore.