Last week I was tracking the River Severn down from its source in the remote Welsh mountains near Mount Plynlimon. I followed it down from there to the Arlingham/Newnham isthmus, but there is still some way to go before the mighty river meets the sea in the Bristol Channel.

This last stretch passes by Lydney, which is where the river is joined by the Lyd brook (not to be confused with Lydbrook), which wanders down from Cannop through Parkend, Whitecroft and Norchard, becoming a post-industrial canal before meeting the Severn at Lydney Harbour.

Lydney harbour used to be an important industrial port, mainly for the export of Forest coal. The great visitor centre at the harbour shows the harbour before the first world war bustling with ships, people and mining produce. I can remember when the famous cruise vessels Balmoral and Waverley provided day trips to Ilfracombe and Weston, available at high tide during the summer. The tides would not permit the boats to return to Lydney, so after visiting those interesting Somerset towns, the day trippers were taken across the channel to places like Porthcawl on the South Wales coast to complete their journey back to Lydney by coach. The north Somerset coastline is particularly dramatic, and the passage under the two Severn bridges is an awesome experience. The second Severn Bridge has just been completed when I made my trip down the river, which made my journey especially spectacular.

The river then seemed to be deeper than it is now. The Waverley and the Balmoral no longer visit the Severn, so those great voyages from Lydney down the Bristol Channel are no longer possible. That is, unless you bring your own boat, or if you can hitch a lift with a Lydney Boat Club member.

On the other side of the river from Lydney at Sharpness, the canal from there to Gloucester has taken all commercial river traffic away, as testified by the three skyscraper storage silos, which dominate the landscape on the Cotswold side of the river. In the earlier days of telecommunications, the height of these towers enabled county wide telecommunications by ‘line of sight’ technology.

Through this, Information was be transmitted unrestricted by obstructions to other high level points around the county, including Edge Hills near Cinderford, the Severn Bridge and various Cotswold peaks. But this sort of technology, although pioneering at its time, is now sadly obsolete, as communications technology has rapidly evolved. .Sharpness towers are now free from communications hardware.

Fron Lydney to the Beachley peninsula, the river is accompanied by the Gloucester-Cardiff rail line, as the A48 takes an inland route through Aylburton, Alvington and Tidenham. The great local landscape painter, Doug Eaton, has produced a most atmospheric painting of the wide river there. It is low tide, and a couple of fishermen are wading into the shallows with their nets, and the Severn Bridge is in the distance. It is the old Severn Bridge, as the painting was produces in the early 1970s, long before Severn Bridge 2. It was the first painting I acquired after my move to the Forest in the early 1970s.