Lydney Harbour

 

Some places have greatness thrust upon them, the Jurassic coast for example, just by being there and occasionally falling down on people. Others struggle to earn greatness, places like Lydney Harbour. 

There, the greatness lies in people with vision — how to make a tourist attraction from tidal mud and the occasional Severn bore of varying intensity. The bores are actually starred and graded, according to height and velocity: a two star, three star, five star bore.  “You’d be a five star bore,” my wife murmured. She was probably right. 

Lydney Harbour. First impressions

Lydney itself boasts the remains of an Iron Age fort, the ruins of a Roman temple built upon it, and the memory of the Beatles playing there in 1962

When we were on the Jurassic Coast, the impulse to take a photograph or three was overwhelming, especially since a day or two before a great chunk had just fallen off into the sea. I’d just finished taking my shots when a little man in pink corduroys, waistcoast, tweed jacket and matching cap marched up to me, addressed me as ‘my good man’ and called me an ‘idiot.’ He drew my attention to the previous fall, some distance away. 

The rock fall some days before

The gorgeous complexity of ancient rock— I stress, some distance away

I listened in silence, remembering when as a teenager I’d gone on the railway line, passing our house, for the perfect night-time shot. A train ran every two hours and one had just passed, so I wasn’t unduly concerned, less so on the Jurassic coast where geological time is even more leisurely than British Rail and runs to no known schedule. There was no point in arguing. The man obviously felt compelled to impose health and safety on me, just as I had felt compelled to take a photograph. But, by heavens, he’d have felt right at home at Lydney Harbour, in fact, he may have even been responsible for these

They were all over the place, wherever we walked

Lydney Yacht Club

Lockgates and mud, lots of lovely, hypnotic mud

Given time, a million years or so, mud becomes rock through lithification. Mud is wonderful stuff.

And out on the Severn Esturary

The Lydney Harbour project will involve cafes, landscaping and flower meadows, but for me, it has to be mud.

What? No warning signs

Peepholes aligned to places of significance on the other side of the Severn.

Imaginative and attractive, though a telescope might be of more use, especially 

since the view in many cases were blocked be brambles on the other side. 

Mind you, the peepholes might look quite fearsome in the dark, a monument to the Celtic god Nodens?

Ah, good, another warning sign. I was beginning to feel neglected, nervous even.

Berkeley Castle on the other side of the Severn (focus lost via zoom, but a nice pattern.)

And to end—my favourite horror story of the Middle Ages, where there were no warning signs and little health and safety:

 When Edward II was deposed by the future Henry IV he was imprisoned in Berkeley Castle where he was meant to die from hunger and privation. Showing no consideration whatsoever, he remained in reasonable health, so they decided to kill him in a way that left no mark on his body. The legend has it that one night, a hollow bone was rammed up his bottom and then a red hot poker was inserted through the bone leaving no charring as evidence. His screams could be heard from over five miles away - presumably from Lydney - a town that next heard loud screaming in 1962 when the Beatles played. 

The Severn Bore in action.