I have stayed in a couple of pubs which don’t do breakfasts, at first I thought it a bit strange but I have decided I prefer them. This morning as I was awake at 6am I made myself a cup of tea and was packed up and out of the door by 7am. I only have cornflakes for breakfast at home so an energy bar with my tea is enough. I was keen to get going as I knew there was lots to see in Berkeley and I managed to knock off the 13 miles by 11am.
The Severn Way ignored the river today and followed the towpath of the ship canal all the way to Sharpness, dead level the whole way.
It passes Slimbridge the nature reserve owned by the Wildlife and Wetlands Trust, it was founded by Peter Scott the famous naturalist and painter who was the son of Scott of the Antarctic but the only birds I saw were swans and mallard however great excitement when I met a deer deer-paddling along the canal. I presume it had fallen in and was having difficulty finding a bit of bank low enough to be able to scramble out. I tried not to frighten it too much but made sure it was going towards a more promising bit of bank as I walked on.
A little later on I mentioned this to a fisherman, he said they quite often find deer which have drowned and if I had called the fire brigade out they would have come to rescue the poor animal. I spent the rest of the walk worrying about it, I do hope it found a way out or a more responsible person spotted it and called the brigade.
Just before Sharpness is the “Ships Graveyard” where 30 or so ships have been purposely beached to strengthen the banks against erosion, a couple are pictured above. Close by is the site of the Severn Bridge disaster of 1960 when two fuel barges were caught by the tide, missed the entrance to Sharpness dock and crashed into an old railway bridge which crossed the river a little way upstream. The boats blew up, five crewmen were killed and part of the bridge collapsed and had to be demolished. The bridge is shown in the photograph.
Sharpness is not somewhere you would want to spend the night, it seems quite a busy little port shifting bulk cargo from big ships to barges and lorries.
So I headed a couple of miles inland to Berkeley which was once an important town. It has a castle in which Edward II was murdered and a museum dedicated to Edward Jenner who practised in the town.
Edward II was very unpopular with the barons, he lost the battle of Bannockburn against Robert the Bruce and was gay. His supposed male lover was forced into exile by the barons and was then murdered. His wife (who was from France) was sent to France to negotiate a peace treaty on Edwards behalf but refused to return (perhaps she was also upset at having a gay husband) and raised an army against him eventually resulting in his abdication, imprisonment and murder.
His murder has always been controversial, there were suggestions that a red hot poker was used, but no one has been able to get to the bottom of the story. He was given a grand funeral and his tomb has a prominent position in Gloucester cathedral, I took the picture a couple of days ago whilst going round. The information display next to his tomb in the cathedral did not mention his sexuality, I guess the clergy were just pleased to have the prestige of an English king buried in their church.
The castle has been in the same family since Saxon times but there have been all sorts of disputes to the title, illegitimate heirs etc. The castle has been restored sympathetically and there was lots to take in. Many Trip Advisor comments said “go on a guided tour” rather than just wander round. They are right, it was very interesting
In these covid times the Jenner museum was particularly topical. For hundreds of years both in Africa and China children had been purposely infected through a cut with a small dose of smallpox. If successful they became mildly ill but were then inoculated against the disease. The snag was that they sometimes got full blown smallpox and died or were horribly disfigured. Jenner heard stories about people who worked with cattle did not get smallpox and realised that they were catching cowpox, not a fatal disease, and this was immunising them against smallpox.
He then infected a small boy in the village with cowpox and then a little while later exposed him to smallpox and he didn’t catch it. He later tried it on his own children. The key thing is vaccination is using a different strain to build up the bodies defence against an infection and this is what Jenner pioneered.
When in 1853 it became law that all children should be vaccinated there were protest campaigns and in some cases riots, some things never change.
The picture shows Jenner's house which is now houses the museum.
Tomorrow I hope to walk 17 miles to Severn Beach which is the end of the Severn Way and then catch the train home, stand by for news of the end of this epic adventure.