They include views to the Welsh borders, and the lower reaches of the River Severn, bypassed for shipping by the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal.

The most significant of these is the Blaisdon Fault, which forms the eastern boundary of May Hill and separates it from the younger rocks of the Severn Vale.

[6] The summit of May Hill (grid reference SO695214) is a 32.6-hectare (81-acre) biological and geological Site of Special Scientific Interest in Gloucestershire, notified in 1954.

[9] Much of May Hill is wooded, both coniferous and deciduous, but the summit area is grassland and heath, with a small amount of heather and gorse.

[11] The hill includes a circular trench 100 metres in diameter, thought to be an Iron Age earthwork, surrounding a mound that is probably a round barrow.

The dwindling clump was replenished in time for the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1887, when most of the trees that give the hill its distinctive character today were planted.

[3][12] An area of 30 ha of the hill passed into the care of the National Trust in 1935,[3][1] although the summit has remained vested with Longhope Parish Council and registered as a village green.

[14] One of the benches on the summit is dedicated to the Forest of Dean chronicler, Winifred Foley, and her husband, who had moved to the nearby village of Cliffords Mesne in the 1970s.