By Blue Badge Tour Guide - Anne BartlettThe other day I visited a place right on the south west corner of Gloucestershire that I hadn’t seen for over 50 years.
Many, many years ago as a family, we used to drive to Beachley to catch the car ferry across the wide stretch of the River Severn to Aust near Bristol to save us a 60 mile journey up to Gloucester and down the other side. So, it was a trip back to see if much had changed.
I stood on the jetty and remembered the shear terror of a child as we drove in our car slowly down the slipway. The slipway’s not very wide and we had to make a sharp right hand turn (there was no power steering in those days) We had to drive onto a metal gangway, on onto the ferry, which was moored up, but moving up and down on the waves. We had to drive onto the ferry, then onto a turntable which was pulled round manually by the crew for the car to be pointing in the right direction for parking. And the the crew were continually barking out orders as they had to cram about 19 cars onto the ferry and they were banging on the bonnets of cars saying go over, now back into there…When the ferry was full we’d cross the dangerous fast flowing river to the other side. It took about 15 minutes. Then we’d moored up on the other side and go through the process again – barked orders, onto turntable, gangway, sharp right hand turn, up the slipway and away passing the queue of cars waiting to get onto the ferry to cross to the place we’d just come from.
In 1966 the first Severn Bridge was opened.
Its an interesting place with a car park with views across towards Oldbury. It’s a chance to admire the construction of the bridge which is in fact 2 bridges. The main section spans the Severn Estuary whilst the second smaller section spans the River Wye.
Does anyone else remember the Ferry crossing?
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