I’ve been to Gloucester, many times, I have friends who live there and usually my visits encompass a stay, over a weekend, catching up with the latest family news and gossip and exchanging old memories. I never really have, ’’looked’’, at Gloucester.
Did you know that it is home to Britain’s most inland port? I only found out, during conversation that it recently celebrated its BI-centennial, which is techno speak for 200th anniversary. Once the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal had been built to link the City with the Bristol Channel, giving grain ships access to the docks, the area never looked back - at one time ships apparently would queue for miles along the can al waiting to unload grain and timber.
This does not happen any more but there are about 15 red brick, Victorian warehouses which stand, like guardians, around the three basins of water and, today, provides homes to fascinating attractions.
The National Waterways Museum is appropriately placed in the restores Llanthony Warehouse and covers the 200 years of life on Britain’s inland waterways. You can try your hand at steering a narrowboat - on a simulator of course! - along the canal, but watch out for the locks, they’re trickier than you think! The museum is full of simulators, models and displays, all bringing to life the people who once worked on the canals. If this isn’t enough, the museum continues outside with a variety of colourful narrowboats and barges as well as a massive steam dredger.
It may be that a trip along the canal or River Severn is more to your taste instead of the simulators. The Queen Boadicea II, one of Dunkirk’s ’’little ships’’, runs regularly, every day, throughout the summer. I prefer to be taken on a cruise by someone that knows what they are doing as I once experienced a day out on a tributary of the Medway in Kent. We spent all day opening and closing lock gates to the exclusion of enjoying the beautiful view along the riverside.
The Gloucester Antique Centre is found near the lock. A warehouse full of impressive tables, grand cabinets and elegant desks. On the upper floors are small shops selling everything from books, porcelain and clocks to jewellery, glassware and paintings.
In the heart of the Docks you’ll find, Merchants Quay Shopping Centre, with specialist shops which will meet all tastes and waterside cafes and restaurants, including the aptly named, Dr. Foster’s. (You remember the old nursery rhyme?)
All this is only five minutes walk from Gloucester’s city centre with its majestic Cathedral. I feel that I was missing out on so much over the years and will, in the future, tell you more about my visits during which I saw so much more of Gloucester, a beautifully friendly, ancient and modern City.