It’s Lawrance on the tiller; and we face 15 swing bridges and one lift bridge.
Guess who has to do the bridges?

Wrong! All the bridges have bridge keepers!
Procedure? Red light flashing: bridge keeper has seen us and started the sequence. Green light: go through bridge.

But first we moor at the Sainsburys Pontoon. There won’t be a Greek on the Dock in Sharpness.
Jo and Keith pass us there, after topping up with water just outside Gloucester Dock.

To Sharpness

Except for this exceptional boat we she all kinds of silly things. A house that looks like a mansion but is just a bridge keeper’s cottage.

Bridgekeeper’s Mansion

A winding hole for a DFDS ferry.

Want to turn around?

Old barges with unusual loads.

Unusual Load

We turn around just before Sharpness Dock and more up next to two deliberately sunken barges.
In total there are 86 sunken barges (the Purton Hulks), reinforcing the bank between the river Severn and the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal.

Stabilising the Bank

The next day it is, again, sunny. But I wear jeans, socks, poloshirt, winter jumper, fleece, body warmer, and my fox over my ears. I’m on the tiller, and I have a head-on gale force wind. It’s flipping cold.

At 14:00 hrs we’re back in Gloucester.

On Tuesday I visit the two museums that were closed on Sunday: the Museum of Gloucester and Gloucester Life Museum. And the indoor market, where I find a stall with spices and olives.

Need Spices?

I get a sample of garlic olives, not an olive with garlic in the background, but garlic with an olive in the background.
We end our stay in Gloucester with (again) an alfresco meal at The Greek at the Dock.

Yπαίθριος

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