The Severn at Gloucester

Après le deluge, moi

Moi, après Louis XV de France

Honeysuckle cottage in Hartpury was a real find. Caroline and Richard gave me the warmest of welcomes, just like the crosstitch picture outside my room had promised. Caroline brought me a tray of tea upstairs, and kindly offered supper with them at the kitchen table, so I didn’t have to walk to the pub and back. Caroline and Richard farmed in Hartpury for decades, and now live in a cottage on the edge of the farmland, the border of the garden a haha linking them seamlessly to the fields beyond where horses graze. I passed their old farm on the way in last night and noted the cow artfully positioned to graze near the pond.

Caroline and Richard have lived a fascinating life during their 64 years of marriage, and we chatted about their escapades for ages (Everest Base Camp! Cycling the length of New Zealand! Raising five children!). After a good night’s sleep, breakfast was poached eggs, toast made from local bread, and Caroline’s home-made marmalade. It was absolute luxury, and to cap it all she offered to make me a sandwich to take for lunch. Thank you, Caroline!

It wasn’t a long walk back to the Three Choirs Way, and I joined it in the picture-perfect village of Ashleworth, full of architecturally-interesting barns, riders on horses taking a leisurely route across the village green, eggs sold from honesty boxes by the side of the road.

Ashleworth is home to a unique National Trust-owned tithe barn which I couldn’t resist visiting.

It was built in the 1400s by the Canons of St Augustine’s in Bristol to collect and store their tithes of 10% of the local farmers’ crops. There are two gigantic doors in two porches almost as high as the barn itself, and the roof is supported by buttresses.

Square holes cut into limestone in the side walls encouraged owls to fly in to eat the rats and mice. Currently three species of bat roost in the mediaeval timber framed roof, and in the masonry, making it difficult to conserve the architecture of the building without disturbing them.

In front of the barn, there is a flood gauge which, rather ominously, measures depths of up to 9 feet, some way away from the river. Houses, barns and sheds are all elevated above the ground and accessed by steps, and when I got to it, Ashleworth Quay was decorated with a row of sandbags. I could only imagine how bad the flooding has been recently.

I had switched to the Severn Way, and it felt comfortable and familiar to be walking back by a river. The tide was low and the sun was sparkling in the green water, making the willows lining the banks spell-blindingly bright.

Unfortunately, the ground was quite uneven, and I had to keep my eyes down to avoid turning my ankle on the ruts. There were more parched and cracked ex-maize fields, these ones dotted with smooth pebbles resembling those on a seashore. Sure enough the presence of devil’s claw fossil shells confirmed the whole area had once been covered by sea.

Like yesterday, I was feeling fairly exposed to the sun, and was considering covering up, although that would have made the day very much hotter. The path climbed away from the river into the village of Maisemore, where I stopped to have a look at where I might conceivably detour off the path to procure myself some suncream. I had just identified that Tesco’s would be the nearest place, and was feeling rather depressed about having to extend the day to bring this about, when a man cycling past with a saw sticking out of his bicycle basket stopped to ask me whether I needed directions. When I explained what I was trying to sort, he said that he and his wife had a whole drawer of bottles of suncream at home and they could give me one to take away with me. What incredible kindness! Chris had been on his way back from clearing the footpath (hence the saw), and it was my great good fortune to have met him. His wife Anne went to find me a bottle of factor 50, and I really am utterly grateful to both of them that they saved me from what would undoubtedly have been a very nasty case of sunburn.

There is a complicated network trunk roads around the north-west end of Gloucester, and I have travelled them very many times over the years since Stephen’s parents lived for a long while in Gloucester Cathedral close. They are constructed as flyovers above land that clearly floods very regularly, and my path now wound its way through this very interesting area. I had never realised that the River Seven splits into two channels north of Maisemore, which only come together south of the huge roundabout at Over. The island that is created is a 2.1-mile-long squashed figure of eight, low lying farmland for the most part, with a nature reserve at the bottom end. I had entered the island at its top end, unbeknownst to me, although I had taken note that the kissing gate had recently been underwater, with the ground washed away and debris piled up.

Further signs of flood (it took me a while to understand what I was seeing) came in the next field, in a gigantic carpet of wheatstraw stalks, scoured from the field by floodwater, which when it receded left the evidence of swirling eddies and currents in patterns of the beached flotsam.

I crunched my way over the field to the far corner, where a graffiti kingfisher under bridge marked the end of the farmland and the beginning of the nature reserve.

Much of the reserve is wetland, but once I had finished crossing the lattice of road and rail bridges (collecting en passant some more exemplars of Tiny Trolls Under Bridges to add to my occasional series), I entered Richard’s Wood by a whimsically and incomprehensibly-designed Millenium kissing gate.

I speculated vaguely that this beautiful mixed deciduous woodland must have been planted in memory of someone local, but then I came across two interpretation boards, both vandalised, but from which I gathered that the wood commemorates the 500th anniversary of the incorporation by letters patent of the city of Gloucester, by Richard III. The trees are 40 years old now, and growing beautifully.

It was now lunchtime. I had come 12km and was craving a sit down with a coffee and an ice cream. I had my heart fixed on Gloucester Docks for this satisfaction. Chris had warned me that there might be difficulties crossing the footbridges into Gloucester, and sure enough the first bridge that I came to, which would have lead me straight into Gloucester Docks, was shut for maintenance.

Ugh — I could practically taste the coffee. But no banana. I had to trail round over the road bridge, but this annoyance did have one silver lining: I caught the only glimpse of the cathedral tower that I had during my entire passage of the city. I simply could not have left without seeing it!

Once on the right side of the river, I collapsed onto the first bench I saw, and fervently blessed Caroline for her life-saving, miraculous cambozola and salad sandwich.

I enjoyed it all the more both for the view, and also for the fact that they had pulled the road drawbridge up behind me. What is it with it being impossible to get over the bridges into Gloucester?

Very much restored by the cheese sandwich, I decided on a repeat visit to PizzaExpress, where I had had a very pleasant lunch with my friend Jenny a few months ago, and ordered a cappuccino, and a lime and basil sorbet. Rather a posh treat… but look, how beautiful and obviously refreshing!

I used the sit-down time to check what was coming up route-wise. Rather depressingly, it appeared that I still had 15 more kilometres to go, and most of that was going to be on roads.

This is a problem with some of the walks that I have undertaken over the past year: the named long distance paths (Anglesey Coastal Path, Three Choirs Way for example) are carefully planned and of usually reliable quality, but having decided that I want to visit Ros in Cambridge, or Kitty in Bristol, I am astonished to find there exists no Sophie Holroyd Way to take me there. I can intersect with existing routes, such as the three I have walked on today, but there are always sections to link up, and these often turn out to be difficult farmland, or road-walking. And sometimes when I am planning a very long route, I need to engineer in some shortcuts to make it possible in the time I have available.

Another thing I did while taking tiny deliciously cold spoonfuls of sorbet, was to look up the location of the nearest chemist, primarily to get me some suncream, but also to reboot the stocks of Compeed (see? I haven’t bored you with the details). Boots (ha!) was quite a long way away, but there was a Sainsbury’s right around the corner which I would have to pass to get back on my route from the docks.

It was only a short walk along the river to get there, and I couldn’t quite see on the map why the route I had planned didn’t follow this obviously clear river path. Closer inspection revealed that it in fact was not only the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal, but that it passed straight by Frampton where my accommodation was booked, and also that the tow path would take me all the way, cutting out some kilometres from my original route in the process. Bingo!

The immediately obvious feature of the canal was the astonishing number of anglers competing in the first of this year’s league matches. It seemed as though their stations or pegs (as I leaned to them then after a number of conversations) were only 10 yards apart. All the anglers had exactly the same equipment: 13-meter booms with a little cup on the end to hold of a bait cake to drop in the middle of the canal, another with a net on the end to land fish, a heavy duty foldaway seat, a huge bait box, various buckets and a large holding net in front of the seat and — gosh. So much stuff.

I walked along that canal for four hours, and I can tell you that they were strung along the entire length.

Not many of them were having much luck. The very last angler I spoke to explained why: the fishing season starts in mid June, but that regulation only applies to flowing water. Still water and canals can be fished the whole year round. Nonetheless, the fish are spawning at this time of year, and are consequently not feeding. He was baffled why they should put on a competition in such a way as to potentially disturb the breeding season and the growing vegetation, and with such very poor likelihood of fishing success.

The anglers fish in teams, one team member together with rivals from other teams to each section of pegs, so that a team fishes all up and down the canal. It seems a very solitary pursuit. Every single one of the 130 anglers on the canal today was a man. One had his family on blankets beside him, and another had his partner sitting on a chair with her feet on a box, but they were the exceptions.

Not all the fisherman had had totally terrible days. As I passed the woman and her partner he landed an eel — or perhaps a lamprey, which has a history round here (lampreys were in ample supply in the weirs on the river by Gloucester castle — now the prison. A lamprey pie was sent annually by the city to the sovereign as a token of loyalty until the late 19th century, and an elaborately-crusted lamprey pie was sent to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, in the same vein). I photographed the eel in its net and admired its oar-like tail. The angler handled it with a towelling beer mat — slimy creatures! He hated them, he said, but their length still counted in his daily total. I asked what team he belonged to. ‘Travellers, we’m’, he said.

Another chap had just caught a sizeable bream, and yet another was trying to land a ‘big ‘un’, but the line broke and he lost it.

Following the principle that you should always ask someone with a long lens what they are photographing, I stopped to chat to Nicky. She was watching a kingfisher nest The female (dot of orange on her beak for identification// lipstick, said Nicky) was invisibly on the nest in a hole dug into the side of the bank behind their perching branch, and the male was out somewhere, fishing. I got my binoculars out and saw the hole in which the female was nesting. I would’ve liked to have waited with Nicky for the male to come back, and I did for a while, but honestly, I still had so far to go…

My feet felt that they were taking a real battering on the tarmac cycle path, and there were few places to sit down. But it was so very beautiful on the canal. It reminded me very much of some of the days last year walking to Cambridge, and it was impossible to keep the smile off my face.

There were swans nesting, in huge soft nests made of dry grasses. One even nested right by a footbridge, seemingly unbothered by the proximity of passers-by like myself.

As well as walkers there were many cyclists, one in particular had a little dog sticking out of his backpack.

I saw these two again later; it seems they live in a huge rusting hulk of a boat moored permanently to the side of the canal.

Speaking of boats, there were plenty to look at. My two favourite were one with an enviable collection of bonsai trees on its roof,

and another decked out as a galleon.

The sun was noticeably lower in the sky now, and I was taking breaks to sit down on benches and take my boots off more and more frequently. Saul Junction was the last of these, a pretty, well-maintained place.

The anglers were now all packing up. Each had a huge trolley which they had to push for miles along the rutted towpath. It was even heavier going than walking! Some of them felt it had hardly been worth the effort, although all were cheery and had had a good day out.

The bridge came in sight that I was to cross to get to the centre of the village of Frampton, and the Bell Inn. But before I came up to it the canal had one last gift for me… a swan checking the hatching eggs in her nest, and preening her downy grey cygnets.

I thought that would be the last extraordinary photo of an extraordinary day… but that was before I ordered supper!

Stats for the Day

Distance: an unimaginable 27.87km (17.27 miles)

Number of cows seen: 1 (fibreglass 👌🏼)

Quality Sandwich: 1

Quality Ice cream: 1

Fishermen: 130

Swans on nests: 3

Blisters: more than yesterday