Two lands at last connected
Across the waters wide,
And all the tolls collected
On the English side.
Ode on the Severn Bridge, Harri Webb
I don’t get excited about bridges, but if I did, I’d rate the Severn Bridges quite highly. Two immense suspension bridges cross the River Severn where it enters the Bristol Channel, connecting England to Wales. The original was opened by HRH the Queen in 1966, and the ‘Second Crossing’ was opened in 1996. The waters that the bridges span boast the second highest tidal range in the world, with the result that water literally rips through the bridges and over the reefs below.
To symbolise the spirit of the bridges, we invited a Welshman along.
Paddling through on a spring ebb tide made for a serious and committing trip, but was surprisingly good fun. We clocked 12.1 mph in the tide races approaching the original Severn Bridge. The waters calmed as, high above, the bridge blocked out the sun. We drifted into a boily lake between the two bridges, and seemed to be becalmed and stationary; except that the GPS proved that we were still hurtling along. The ‘Second Crossing’ is an astonishing feat of engineering, constructed across a 5 km width of raging tidal rapids. The central span is about 500 metres wide, but we still nearly missed it, as the tidal flows were doing peculiar things.
After the bridges is a channel known as ‘The Shoots’ which boosted us along at 9-10 mph all the way to Clevedon. Trouble is, we weren’t going to Clevedon, we were going quite a bit further …
Glad you lived to tell the tale, sad to have missed it…….
jg