Wednesday 30 March 2022

Freefall: 170th


Saturday night's gig was a joint 170th birthday party at a pub called The Anchor in Epney, just down the road from my dad's house, so a very easy commute. It took four fellas to make the grand total of 170 years; three 40's and a 50. 

I like their idea of combining for the party, it made for a decent sized, enthusiastic crowd. And a relatively cheap band as they presumably split the cost between each other. Maybe I should have hiked my prices up, kind of the opposite of a group discount?

But that hardly seemed fair, and anyway, we had fun.

The pub is on the banks of the Severn; the "unnavigable" stretch below the final weir at Llanthony in Gloucester, before it rounds the horseshoe and broadens out into the aptly named and decidedly treacherous Noose.

After which the river reaches Sharpness and becomes, once more, navigable. After a fashion. And somewhere in the process she transforms from a river to an estuary and then finally into a sea.

Of course, we refer to the bit of water that runs past the Anchor as the unnavigable stretch of the Severn. But Dad and I have sailed past the pub aboard Ondine, our old Drascombe Lugger, three times in previous years, though always on the flood, following the Severn Bore up to Gloucester as part of the Gloucester Ring with friends from Lydney Yacht Club.

On none of those occasions, however, did we ever have the time to stop.

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