I started this little adventure on Thursday 7th April and now, 21 days later, I have completed the 210 miles of the Severn Way. Tomorrow I will write a summary of the walk so now I will just rant and rave about the last five miles of the walk which nearly brought me to tears.
But first the good part of the day, the mornings walk was along nice grass embankments along the side of the river. It passes the Berkeley nuclear power station although it is no longer producing power, it ceased operation in 1989 after 27 years and is slowly being decommissioned, it will be another 50 years before the site is safe enough to be cleared. As I walked across the car park a voice kept on repeating “You are under observation” a bit big brotherish but the annoying thing is that in the corner of the car park I took the wrong path, I it would have been better if the person doing the observing said left for Severn Way, right for Berkeley.
Further on the way passes the Oldbury nuclear power station, this one worked for 44 years it stopped generating power in 2012, why were they built in the same area but not on the same site? As it is they spoil two views rather than one if they were adjacent.
The banner photo shows the old Severn Bridge (the 1966 one), notice to it’s left is an embankment, this is the first hill I have climbed since Newtown 17 days and 180 miles ago! The beach where the photo was taken is called Littleton Warth which in 1885 had an unusual visitor. A whale (I presume a blue whale) was washed up on the beach, it was still alive. Nowadays of course everybody would be out trying to push it back into the sea but in 1885 things were a little different. Two steam traction engines were brought in and, with the help of huge chains, the whale was hauled ashore.
There was then a big debate as to who owned it, it lay there for long enough for the Midland Railway to run excursion trains for people to come and look, supposedly there were 20,000 visitors but of course it started to smell.
Eventually the whale was towed downstream to Bristol where even more people saw it before it was cut up and used for fertiliser.
I climbed up the hill to a viewpoint next to the service station which gives a good view of the bridge the other end of which crosses the river Wye whose source was the same boggy patch I visited three weeks ago.
So far so good, then everything went horribly wrong. Throughout this walk I have been dreaming of passing under the new bridge and walking into the seaside town of Severn Beach.
In the 1920’s Severn Beach became a seaside resort for trippers from Bristol with a swimming pool called the "Blue Lagoon", a boating lake, dozens of fun-fair stalls and donkey rides (on grass). Part of the appeal was that Severn Beach had less strict licensing laws than Bristol.
But soon after passing the old bridge I was confronted with steel fences and signs saying footpath diversion around work building new flood defences, there were no clues as to how far the path was closed and once I had followed the diversion across a couple of fields the signs were nowhere to be seen.
It turned out that the construction work closed off the last four miles of the walk. The photo shows a most unhelpful diversion notice at the other end of the work, it is in tiny print, covers about 40 different paths and gives no clues of how to get around the problem.
I ended up walking along a very busy A road with no pavement for two miles and finally I arrived in Severn Beach along a grotty B road to find --- nothing. There were quite a few houses, a convenience store, a hairdressers and a small cafe that was packed out, probably because it is the only entertainment in town. There is no pub. I was booked on the 17.01 train home, it was 13.30, the prospect of spending 4 hours after the awful last five miles was too much to contemplate so I bought a fresh ticket and headed for home.
This may explain why some Severn Way walkers carry on another 15 miles to Bristol so they can finish on a high.
So a very depressing end to a wonderful walk. Tomorrow when my mood has improved I will write a summary.