Mud, Glorious Mud!

You can say many wonderful things about Lydney, least of all the Beatles playing there in 1962. But Lydney’s history goes back to Roman times and almost certainly before. 

Lydney Harbour was the gateway to the Forest of Dean and prospered as an iron and coal port during the Industrial Revolution. It is the home of the Dean Forest Railway providing scenic tours of the forest. It houses a splendid C17th country house in the Lydney Park Estate.

But for me, the finest thing about Lydney is its magnificent mud. I could stare at it for hours —in theory at least—rain set in and we moved on after fifteen minutes or so. I still maintain though, I could.

Light, water, and mud make fascinating and ever moving patterns. It beats any art installation at the Tate. In fact, it might beat the Tate itself if somehow it could be moved to where the Tate now stands, and with  the added drama of the Tate slowly sinking into it. 

 

And what of the future for Lydney’s mud? The British Isles are slowly moving North East at the leisurely rate of two to three centimetres a year. Insignificant perhaps, but not in geological terms. It took a mere 700 million years for the British landmass to move from the South Pole to its present position. If mud could talk, what adventures it might tell. And what adventures are in store for it?

Apart from its slow but relentless drift the British Isles are also enjoying a gentle see-saw motion. Scotland is slowly rising, rebounding from the weight of ancient glaciers. Southern England is slowly sinking in some form of compensation.  Sometime in the far future, Lydney marshes might be fathoms deep, giddy in motion, and telling curious molluscs of the time the Beatles played Lydney Town Hall in 1962