Gloucester and Beyond

After snapping a few shots of Worcester Cathedral on our way out of town we headed off for our lunchtime stopover, Upton upon Severn, just over two hours down river. It took a little maneuvering to get Chartwell moored on the jetty with the water a little shallow.

With Serafina tied Rachael and I headed off to find a nice pub on the riverside for lunch settling for The Swan Inn. A nice light lunch and we headed off to have a look around town. The most visible landmark around Upton is 'the pepperpot', a 14th century church bell tower. The church has long since been demolished.

Our walk around town didn't last too long, Upton being a nice town but not offering anything special so we were off for a few more hours on the boat. We passed the junction of the River Avon and Tewksbury, a few minutes up the Avon. Continuing on, we plan to visit Tewksbury on our return, finishing the day on CRT moorings at Lower Lode. It had been a warm day on the back of the boat and we were fortunate to catch the Lower Lode Inn just before closing for the afternoon.

Up early and a fast water fill on the jetty moorings meant we were ready for a three hour trip to Gloucester for a few days break. We moored on one of the finger jetty's in the docks.

The Gloucester Docks, once surrounded by warehouses, are now surrounded by apartments in those same renovated warehouses.

Once tied up we trekked into town to have a look around, we are moored very close to the centre of Gloucester. We headed through town to the Gloucester Cathedral where we were fortunate to get a guided tour by a local historian.

They were renovating the front grounds of the cathedral needing to be extremely careful with several graves within the surrounds.

The cathedral has one of the largest stained glass windows I've seen.

The tour took us over an hour and finished in the cloisters where some shots were taken and used in Harry Potter movies. This shot apparently used as part of Hogwarts School.

After dinner I took a walk around the docks. Preparations were well underway for the Tall Ships Festival over the Bank Holiday weekend with temporary fencing being erected, tents and amusements being dropped into place. I came across a large boat, Ambulant, in dry dock ready to be renovated, funded by the Lotteries. I like this idea in the UK where lotteries money is distributed to fund useful works rather than private companies and the government pocketing it.

A couple of nice days in Gloucester and we headed down the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal to Sharpness. This canal used to be quite busy as a commercial canal but those days are all but gone. Rachael enjoyed not having to operate any of the swing bridges along the way with Bridge Keepers on all of them.

We met several of the tall ships heading for Gloucester as we were heading the other way.

One of the ships moored just near us after coming off the ocean and through the lock at Sharpness at high tide, late in the evening.

Sharpness is rather quiet with only the docks there and no village to speak of.

Sharpness Dock

River Severn sand flats with the tide out

Serafina moored

Plenty of bird life

After an overnight stay at Sharpness we headed most of the way back to Gloucester mooring at Rea Bridge, hoping to see the Severn Bore tonight. It was due at 9:45pm and after a short hike down to the river and a half hour wait I managed to get a few shots albeit almost in the dark. The first photo at 9:30pm in twilight with the river, littered with debris, gently flowing towards the sea.

This photo a half hour later in virtual darkness with tide coming up the river (the bore), initially raising the water level of the Severn by what looked like approx 500mm and then only just a short time later the river level was up significantly; my guess, over a metre.

You could certainly hear the surge of water coming before you could see it, it was quite spectacular. Just a little further down the river we could hear cheers as runners were coming in after attempting to beat the bore. Some did but I'm not sure how far they had run.