The road to Lydney Dock

Like a jagged tooth in a cavernous mouth, Lydney Dock juts out into the River Severn, defying both the currents that sweep the estuary and the march of time.

 

In the early nineteenth century, the grandly named Severn and Wye Valley Railway and Canal Company built a horse drawn tramway and canal basin for transporting coal and iron to wharves at Lydney. Mooring was needed for the ships that were to export the goods, and so the dock was built. At first, Lydney moved with the times. The tramway was converted to a railway, broad gauge and then standard gauge, but competition arrived in the shape of the Severn Railway Bridge, and rival docks across the estuary at Sharpness. Closure of the local coal mines followed and, although business at the dock limped on in one form or another, the port finally closed in 1976. Or so it seemed at the time. The patient has now been revived, if not to its former glory. Within the last ten years, the port has been re-opened as a yachting marina.

 

A prominent feature of the dock is its oil lamp, complete with lamp lighter’s ladder. Originally the lamp was extinguished at midnight but, after two people had fallen into the river and drowned, it was agreed that it should remain lit throughout the night. A poignant reminder of even greater tragedy is a giant boulder positioned on the dock. It is a memorial to the victims of an accident in 1960 when a pair of oil barges hit a pier of the Severn Railway Bridge, bringing down two of the girders.

 

I visited the dock yesterday. It was a bright sunny day, but haze misted the horizon, masking the distant road bridge. Sharpness Docks and a decommissioned power plant were visible across the estuary, and around the foot of the dock the ebb tide had revealed banks of rippling sand. Two boys were chasing each other around the edge of the canal basin, stumbling perilously close to the edge. A warning notice, demanding that children should be supervised by an adult, was studiously (or perhaps un-studiously) ignored by their parents. Eventually the boys skipped away to play elsewhere. For today, another tragedy had been avoided.

The canal that's going nowhere

The Coombe Hill Canal in Gloucestershire is unique. It has not attracted the attentions of a preservation society. Canal preservation is now big business, attracting regional development grants, and significant expenditure by local councils. Whether the cost is justified is debateable, but it’s easy to oversimplify the issue. The long term benefits of canal restoration are impossible to quantify, and enthusiasts would point to the many hours spent by volunteers in fund raising and working on the canal.

In Gloucestershire, the Stroudwater Navigation is being dredged, with its crumbling locks and bridges rebuilt; where sections of the canal are missing, there are plans to reinstate the waterway, even where there is the slight problem of a motorway that cuts across the route. The adjoining Thames and Severn Canal is getting similar treatment, with the eventual aim of using these canals to link the rivers Thames and Severn. Over the border, there is an ambitious plan to link Gloucester with Hereford by restoring the Hereford and Worcester Canal, at present no more than a short stretch of water. Meanwhile, The Gloucester and Sharpness is an example of what a canal can look like when it has never been allowed to fall into ruin.

The Coombe Hill canal is another matter. Built originally to carry coal from the Severn to Cheltenham, it never actually reached the town, and had to rely on horse and cart for the final few miles. It became something of a white elephant, with the lease being passed from one canal company to another and when, in 1876, the one and only lock was damaged by flooding, it was effectively abandoned. This tale of woe would not it itself be a good enough reason for it to escape restoration today. But the surrounding meadows are a Site of Special Scientific Interest, and have been purchased by the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust. So the canal is preserved as a wildlife habitat. Where you might expect to see a towpath, there is a very muddy track, the footbridge has left to its own devices, and the wharf is a makeshift car park for nature lovers.



The canal gets its fair share of visitors – dog walkers and families with young children. But while other canals attract joggers, cyclists and anglers, the more typical visitor to Coombe Hill is a solemn and solitary birdwatcher, dressed in camouflage green and armed with serious looking rubber coated binoculars or a camera with an alarmingly long lens. Canal walkers are usually friendly types, who will say hello and maybe tell you something about the ducks that are fussing around the vegetation, but serious birdwatchers have bigger fish to fry, or rather birds to spot. Eye contact with other humans is to be avoided, a distraction from the business in hand.

I really like Coombe Hill, for its windswept meadows, and the sense that nature has been allowed space to get on with what it knows best. Occasionally I’m rewarded by seeing a bird that I recognise; yesterday a pair of Whooper Swans cruised the lake before winging majestically into the distance. Canal restoration has its place, but I hope that it never extends its reach to Coombe Hill.