LEJOG Day 25: Pill to Severn Bridge

Weather: Cloudy with cool Southerly breeze

Distance covered today: 25.8km (16.0mi)

Last night's B&B: Glendale (£40)

Cumulative distance: 465.9km (289.5mi)/ % Complete: 26.5%

GPS satellite track of today's route: Day 25 (click!)

Today was a day of contrasts. It started with an interesting historical insight into earlier times in Pill on the banks of the Avon.  There followed a rather grisly encounter with today’s reality in Avonmouth. I escaped to an idyllic walk amongst the trees in Shirehampton Woods and the grounds of Kingsweston House only to descend via  grim industrial suburbs and their housing estates towards the Bristol Channel, where the path grew narrower and narrower and eventually disappeared in a welter of brambles and nettles along a disused railway line in the middle of nowhere. I checked the map and my satnav. I was firmly on the Severn Way. It seemed though that nobody, except your correspondent in his nascent capacity as an amateur industrial archaeologist, is the slightest bit interested in the rust and decay of Britain’s industrial past and the path has just gradually disappeared without anyone, least of all Ordnance Survey, even noticing. I was forced to retrace my steps and submit myself once more to the rigours of an hair-raising “A” road, this one with no margins at all and populated with angry, articulated juggernauts jousting for space and speed. Eventually though, the Severn Way did re-emerge and I was treated to a great walk along the banks with delightful vistas of the sweep of the estuary, its wildlife and its two magnificent bridges.

On my way into Avonmouth, the sewer (M5) and I parted on amicable terms for the penultimate time. It graciously enabled me to cross the mouth of the Avon in style with excellent views back up to the Mendips.  I was to cross it one final time as I headed for the coast and I will not see it again on this journey.  My next major encounter will probably be with its big brother, the M6 well to the North.

My descent into depressed and sullen Avonmouth was a shock. After all the friendliness of the South West, I was suddenly in a very bitter place, where ranks of unemployed youths passed me without any expression or eye-contact, ignoring me totally, disgruntled, disaffected, disillusioned and distanced from society and it seemed from each other.  It was the uniformity of this isolation that got to me. Graffiti on everything, sign-posts vandalised for the hell of it, all the signs of a society in the grip of a sort of terminal disease – post-industrial apathy.

It reminded me that this was not the first difficult encounter I had had with Bristol and its environment. I remember once many years ago in the early 70s coming here with Richard and receiving one of the hard lessons of my life. To explain it, I need to go back a bit to the intensely naive frame of mind I had had in South Africa before Richard and I had set out on our European travels.  I felt alienated from society in South Africa, for obvious reasons, to do with the social and political situation there. But I also felt culturally estranged. I remember devouring books on the alternative culture in Europe and America. I thought back to my time in the US, the year of Woodstock, the Chicago Convention, the assassination of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, the turning of the tide on the Vietnam War and all of this alienated me even further from the complacent, conventional and provincial attitudes of many of my contemporaries. My favourite author was Jean-Paul Sartré. I listened compulsively to the folk and rock music of the time and tried to make sense of Dylan, Pink Floyd, Jefferson Airplane, Cream and others, thinking that there must be some sort of fundamental philosophy connecting it all, if only I could hook into it. I had no idea that so many of these lyricists were as lost as I was, scrabbling for words and rhymes that meant little, if anything. I determined to leave behind my excellent technical and engineering education and to set out on a search for the alternative culture.

And so after touring Europe in a fruitless quest for meaning, Richard and I finally wound up in some sort of student commune or squat in Bristol. I was convinced that the young people there would be a conduit to my destination. But they were not. What is more, if they felt anything about my presence other than indifference, it was resentment.  One of the songs doing the rounds in those days was entitled “I’ve never met a nice South African”. People thought it was really funny, and of course it was, particularly given the rising international antagonism towards apartheid. But I was trying to say that my presence was a personal negation of those origins. And yet I found that I was being classified despite my beliefs. I argued that this was exactly the sort of prejudice and discrimination that was the cause of the problem in South Africa. I got nowhere, of course. In fact I found that many of the young people with whom I was trying to connect were in fact themselves poorly educated, they were just as alienated from their own origins and no more connected to the alternative culture than I was. They were not going to take me anywhere.  It was a rude awakening.
 
Meanwhile, Richard who had a far more engaging and attractive personality than I did, was making his way quite successfully on a rather different path. It was clearly time for a parting of the ways. Gradually, I began to understand that I had indeed been very privileged in terms of my family origins, my education and my genetic endowment. The long road back to a conventional career started in those unpromising streets of Bristol. Once I found a secure position in a reputable company whose ethics I grew to respect, I stayed with it for 34 years. It might not have happened had I not learned my lesson in Bristol.  Whether that sort of traditional loyalty was good for me or not will doubtless be the subject of a future analysis.

Tomorrow the next phase of my journey begins. From finding my own way, sometimes successfully, sometimes, like today, less so, I will from tomorrow be on the first of the National Trails of my journey, Offa’s Dyke, which runs roughly up the border between Wales and England. My direction will be dictated by the path and its guidebook.  I will have less freedom, but more time to look and think.  Coincidentally, I will also be spending more time with friends and relations who will be joining me for stages of my journey.

And best of all, Veronica will be joining me on Saturday for two nights and a rest day. Superb!

The quiet harbour in Pill, once home to the Pill Hobblers and the Pill Pilots whose history is intimately connected to the River Avon and its maritime past.

A hammer and spanner commemorating the M5 bridge across the Avon

Industrial contrast: A decaying factory building partly obscures a modern container crane with a electricity generating windmill in the background

After escaping Avonmouth, I entered the lovely Shirehampton Woods

Kingsweston House in the middle of Shirehampton

Kevin's Council Identifier spies the Bristol Unitary Authority! The 4th County Council of my trip.

My final crossing of the sewer (M5), feeling reconciled after it escorted me across the Avon

I have no idea what this Sevalco Plant made. Whatever it was, it isn't making it any more. Like so many others around it, it is desolate and decaying, never to recover

The wily Gloucester Councillors tried to fool me by not putting their imprimatur on their bins, but they forgot about the recycling bags. I was now in South Gloucestershire, though even the locals seemed confused. Perhaps they were Welsh?

The beautiful sails of the new Severn Bridge, caught in a moment of afternoon sunshine, contrast with the powerful but stubby stancheons and pillars

Under the Severn Bridge: an engineer's view. There is a trolley that can travel from one end to other underneath for maintenance purposes. Clever!

Flailing the floodbanks? Will they be wearing leather and carrying whips?

The old Severn Bridge, my destination for today, was built in 1966, the year I left school, and was opened by HRH Queen Elizabeth II. The horses in the foreground seemed to be grazing freely on the grassy banks of the Severn. A lovely pastoral sight.

A gorgeous farmhouse overlooking the old bridge

The graceful old bridge and its beautiful curves. The new bridge looks masculine, this one feminine (or is my imagination running riot?)

Suits me! (selfishly!)