Chopwell Forest,

It is always nice to get an opportunity to visit another FE Forest. They all have a different mix of trees, topography, and feel to them.  I stopped off at Chopwell, near Gateshead, fairly late in the afternoon just as the dog-walkers were  arriving so the car park was pretty lively with boots popping open and disgorging their wildly excited occupants in panting, flying leaps. But the forest soon swallowed them up and I took the easy blue trail that followed the Old Railway line. I soon came across these memorabilia.
According to the signage these wagons are on the track bed of the Chopwell and Garesfield colliery Railway (1896-1961) . When first running it was used to transport bricks to build the colliery buildings. Then, once the colliery was open the railway was transporting 3000 tons of coal a day.
Now, as the sun went down the only disturbance was a flock of small birds feeding in the branches and the rustle of a chilly wind in the dry vegetation. It was difficult to imagine a line of these leviathans screeching and groaning down a track with one of Stephenson's  locomotives belching smoke and steam at the fore.
It didn't take long to briskly walk along the wide path through mature deciduous woodland and some stands of conifer in a circuit. The last few hundred yards a treat (for me) was in store with a variety of perhaps 30 different trees all with labels. I love testing myself, especially in winter to see if I can identify everything correctly by bark pattern. I did get most but then got stuck between a Grand and a Noble Fir. I was barking up the wrong tree obviously, but they were both magnificently living up to their names