Coaley Peak is a picnic site and viewpoint in the

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

county of

Gloucestershire Gloucestershire ( abbreviated Glos) is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn and the entire Forest of Dean. The county town is the city of Gl ...

. Located about south-west of the town of

Stroud Stroud is a market town and civil parish in Gloucestershire, England. It is the main town in Stroud District. The town's population was 13,500 in 2021. Below the western escarpment of the Cotswold Hills, at the meeting point of the Five ...

overlooking the village of

Coaley Coaley is a village in the England, English county of Gloucestershire roughly 4 miles from the town of Dursley, and 5 miles from the town of Stroud, Gloucestershire, Stroud. The village drops from the edge of the Cotswold Hills, overlooked by Fr ...

, Coaley Peak offers of reclaimed farmland (now a wild flower meadow) with views over the

Severn Vale , name_etymology = , image = SevernFromCastleCB.JPG , image_size = 288 , image_caption = The river seen from Shrewsbury Castle , map = RiverSevernMap.jpg , map_size = 288 , map_c ...

and the

Forest of Dean The Forest of Dean is a geographical, historical and cultural region in the western part of the county of Gloucestershire, England. It forms a roughly triangular plateau bounded by the River Wye to the west and northwest, Herefordshire to the n ...

. It is next to a

Woodland Trust The Woodland Trust is the largest woodland conservation charity in the United Kingdom and is concerned with the creation, protection, and restoration of native woodland Natural heritage, heritage. It has planted over 50 million trees since 1972 ...

beech Beech (''Fagus'') is a genus of deciduous trees in the family Fagaceae, native to temperate Europe, Asia, and North America. Recent classifications recognize 10 to 13 species in two distinct subgenera, ''Engleriana'' and ''Fagus''. The ''Engle ...

wood and the

National Trust The National Trust, formally the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, is a charity and membership organisation for heritage conservation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, there is a separate and ...

's Frocester Hill site. The

Cotswold Way The Cotswold Way is a long-distance footpath, running along the Cotswold Edge escarpment of the Cotswold Hills in England. It was officially inaugurated as a National Trail on 24 May 2007 and several new rights of way have been created. His ...

long-distance footpath passes through the site. The site includes the excavated

Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts ...

burial site

Nympsfield Long Barrow Nympsfield Long Barrow is the remains of a Neolithic burial site or barrow, located close to the village of Nympsfield in Gloucestershire, South West England. It lies at the edge of a woods, and is now the location of a picnic site. It is one ...

. Coaley Peak was for many years a seasonal home to a community of

new age travellers New Age travellers, not completely synonymous with but otherwise shortened to New Travellers (often referred to as "crusties"), are people in the United Kingdom generally espousing New Age beliefs along with the hippie culture of the 1960s (over ...

, who were evicted around 2002 to make way for more grassland.

References

{{coord, 51.71095, -2.29955, type:landmark_region:GB_source:enwiki-osgb36(SO794014), display=title Parks and open spaces in Gloucestershire Cotswolds