SHARPNESS REVISITED

 

August '22 visit to the Severn Estuary

50 years ago Tony and his brother owned a Trawl Fishing company out of Plymouth, fishing in the Channel between Portland and Land’s End. Those were the days when the raping and scraping of the seabed wasn’t regarded as a sacrilege. Attitudes have changed since then. However, going back to about 1978, their biggest boat needed her prop shaft examined and the nearest dry-dock which would accommodate her was at Sharpness up the Severn estuary. Tony spent several weeks up there, overseeing the job and became interested in the area. The docks are at the entrance of the Gloucester Canal from the Severn.

We have revisited the area and followed the canal, several times since, and now in Post-Covid(??) times we felt we’d like to have a few days in the van’s first outing since the pandemic began, and renew our acquaintance with this area, so different from Cornwall.

August 23^rd 2022

We left home late, at ten am. We must be getting old! There were a few drops of rain and the sky was looking very unsettled as we left, but it gradually brightened as we got beyond Exeter. Our first interest was a Red Kite flying over the M5 as we approached Cullompton.

We reached Bridgewater about midday and crossing a small swing bridge over a canal reached through an industrial estate on the outskirts of town, we parked near a waterside pub.

Swing Bridge over the Taunton to Bridgewater Canal. This connects the River Tone to the Parrett  at Bridgewater

                                  Canal-side Pub.

The canal, constructed in 1827, connected the River Tone at Taunton to the River Parrett and thence the sea.

It is 14.5 miles long and has seven locks.

Patches of floating Frogbit and luxuriant vegetation in the bank-sides almost hid the boats moored at intervals along the towpath

Home from Home?

In the afternoon we drove on up the A38 and driving through Cannington we took the lanes out towards Steart Point at the mouth of the Parrett estuary.

We stopped in 'our usual corner' where there is now another ubiquitous notice forbidding overnight parking and camping.

A very workmanlike rig was already parked. We walked out to the long cobble bank protecting the salt marsh from the sea. It was low tide and a wide expanse of mud was ahead. A few Black-headed Gulls were loafing on the mud offshore but otherwise there was little birdlife to be seen.

The nuclear power station at Hinkley Point looms to the south, but the huge construction of Hinkley B. could hardly be seen in the rather hazy conditions.

After a quick walk out to the cobble bank we headed back down the road a little way to  where we could park and walked along a bank to a 'blind' ; a wooden 'wall' from which bird-watchers could watch any birds on the saltmarsh. This is now part of a very extensive wetland reserve created in 2014. 

The new wetland reserve, created by allowing sea water to flood extensive areas of wet-lying grazing meadows and alleviating flooding of properties.

Showing flooded area. This is now a wildlife area of great significance, although at this time of the year as the autumn passage of birds has barely started, the marshes as we saw them at low water and during this very dry spell, were very quiet.

We then drove  towards Glastonbury along the A39 and along the top of the Polden Hills and down to Catcott Reserve on the Somerset Levels. The  Levels were looking refreshingly green as the water management here is to keep the water table high by closing the sluices in the rhynes (drainage ditches) so they were full of water, covered by bright green Duckweed.

Looking from the hide by the small carpark at Catcott,  we were pleased to see between 40 and 50 Cattle Egrets among the cattle. They now breed in this area and are another addition to the increasing number of heron species now settling and spreading their range in Britain.

Later in the evening the cattle had wandered off into the marshy ground to graze, the egrets had dispersed and we saw a Great White Egret striding the adjacent rushy lagoon, long-legged , its long neck leaning forward, pointing its strong yellow beak ahead as it hunted.

As the evening light faded, black duck-shapes were making duck movements, leaving scarcely a ripple on the glassy water. The silence was profound and the stillness complete.

Wednesday 24th Aug.

Yesterday evening's threatening black clouds didn't come to anything and we awoke to a fresher breeze and early sun which soon clouded over.

A pre-breakfast visit to the hide produced five Gadwall among the numerous Mallards. They were picked out by the white speculum in their wings, and black stern. The Great White Egret had resumed its patrol of the rushy lagoon to our left, watched by a family of Mute Swans with their well-grown brood of seven in grey-brown plumage. Bands of light drizzle swept across the marshes at times.

Sharpness was our main destination this trip and we resumed our northward journey in heavy traffic till we reached the Sharpness car park beside the big lock which gives access to shipping coming up the Severn to the docks.

The dangerous moving mud banks and erratic currents in the huge tidal range of the Severn make it compulsory to take a pilot on board any vessel over a given size, to navigate the estuary from Bristol to Sharpness and on up to Gloucester.

The tricky entrance to the big lock giving access from the estuary to the docks and on up the canal to Gloucester.

Common Gull perching on the lock wall.

The docks, dating from 1825 are said to be the eighth biggest in the UK apparently. We were sorry to see there is no longer a notice at the lock office about notification of shipping due in and out of the docks. They used to give the date, the tide time, the cargo and originating or destination port of ships due in the current week. It is always good to gongoozle the manoeuvres.

The port is important for the collection and export of scrap metals of all kinds and there is a busy traffic of heavy lorries carrying scrap to the extensive warehouses lining the waterway between the main lock and the start of the canal.

Sarah B, a bulk-cargo coaster, being unloaded. The cargo looked like fertilizer.

The port is a muddle of big warehouses both in use and derelict, areas of scrub, securely fenced places, tag-ends of old rail tracks with marooned and rusting old rolling stock, and busy active dock activities. The whole area has the canal running though, crossed by several swing bridges, until it abruptly gives way to the moorings for leisure and long-boat basin and the canal proper, going on its wide placid way between trees to Gloucester to the north east. In Sharpness itself there are few dwellings; the main housing, shops and facilities are just beyond, in Newtown.

The Dockworkers' Union Clubhouse area where camping is tolerated. We have stayed there on several occasions; now, with the internet connections, the word has spread and we arrived to find several others already there and were later joined by a couple more vans.

A path leads from here back to the docks or down to the canal basin and towpath.

At the bottom of the footpath down from the Dockworkers' club. Looking down the estuary from the canal basin. The two Severn Bridges are blotted out in the haze, but they span the gap in the far horizon.

Just behind the previous camera shot, we saw fresh Otter footprints in mud as it trekked across to look for shore crabs in the seaweed on the shore.

Note the Otter prints have 5 claws. The smaller paler prints on the right have only 4 front pads and are of a dog or a fox.

Looking up the estuary  at about half-tide. The water is hiding the stumps of the pillars supporting the spans of the original railway bridge.  This railway crossed the canal on the right by a swing bridge and then several spans crossed the estuary to Lydney on the Gloucestershire shore on the left.  In 1960 two big barges loaded with fuel lost control in thick fog and collided  under the bridge. There was a huge explosion and the bridge was destroyed. Five lives were lost. The damaged bridge was eventually totally demolished in 1967.

The older, original lock from the estuary, leading to the upper canal basin. It is now silted up and out of use .Below is a picture of the original canal basin, pre-dating the present docks.

 

The head of the canal basin with moored leisure and longboats.

The memorial to the Merchant Navy training ship.

When I was a child the boy next door trained on her in the early 1940s, before becoming a cadet officer. He was torpedoed twice in the war as a teenager but survived.

The towpath going towards Gloucester. The Severn is close on the left at this place and makes a good vantage point from which to see and hear Reed Warblers in the reedbed below the wall.

The Purton Hulks.

A couple of miles up the towpath is another swing bridge over the canal at a hamlet called Purton..In 1909 there was a catastrophic collapse of the canal bank which threatened to drain this all-imp0rtant canal. In this place, the canal and river were less than 50 yards apart. An emergency plan was swiftly put in place and several old wooden barges, locally built and once locally used but now derelict, were floated to the collapse and beached to shore the bank up .Ships from all over the country were subsequently added to the defences. Over time, several concrete barges were also beached here to prevent further erosion by strengthening the bank.

A group of dedicated volunteers known as 'The Friends of Purton' have researched the history of all the beached barges and have erected explanatory plaques. The site has become known as 'the ships' graveyard' and is a modest tourist attraction.

All that now can be seen of the barge 'Envoy'

.The remains of several of the concrete barges reinforcing the river bank.

Short though this trip was, we always find the combination of the history and the current on-going life of this working port, very interesting, and with the added attraction of a very pleasant towpath walk.