My longest ride of the year/post covid ride so far today. 45.3 miles out to Sharpness docks on the River Severn and back:
I have always like old, run-down places. Sharpness is just about hanging on, with a couple of fertiliser ships a week making it up the Bristol Channel. Apologise for the quality of the pictures, due to a combination of a smudge on the lens and strong sunshine behind everything interesting. There is a great view to be had towards the South West, where you can see two suspension bridges and two nuclear power stations, but that was directly into the sun, so no picture today. There is currently an old passenger ferry and an old lightship rusting away alongside each other in the dock, and a line of old railway goods wagons surrounded by weeds add to the feeling of a place that time forgot:
This time I rode on a few yards further than usual, and discovered a couple of old shunters that I've never noticed before:
Looking northwards from Sharpness Docks you get a good view of the (blue) Gloucester and Sharpness Canal where it runs within a stone's throw of the (much browner) River Severn:
On the way back I called in at the Purton Hulks. This is a surreal place, again where the canal and the river come into close contact .... so close in fact that the river was once in danger of eroding its way across to the canal bank, so something had to be done about it. In the 1960s, dozens of coal barges were deliberately run aground on the East bank of the Severn to protect the bank from further erosion. Over the next 60 years, those that weren't already filled with concrete when they were run aground have filled up with silt from the river and been overgrown with turf and reeds. It really is a surreal place, where you can stand on the deck of one sunken ship and see another 9 or 10 wrecks nearby. A few shots:
They are still doing a grand job of keeping the river at bay. On today's ride I came across our club coming the other way on their 100km ride. Nice to catch up with them and chat for a few moments. Then just before I got home I came across another club mate out walking his dogs. I was out for 4 hours 45 mins in the end to do a 43.5 mile ride. Plenty of stops on my way round, including a Diamond Jubilee bench in the middle of nowhere, where I sat for a while listening to birdsong. By the time I got home, I ached just about everywhere, but that was a great little afternoon out in the sunshine.
