Splatt Swing Bridge (Sharpness Canal) – Thursday 27th July

At 4am this morning I was wondering where I could get a gun from!  The seagulls were making such a racket and I just couldn’t get back to sleep.  Two hours I spent playing games until my eyes wouldn’t stay open any longer and I knew that I could finally get back to sleep.  Fortunately Richard didn’t wake up until 8am and even then I didn’t really come too.  If we stay in Gloucester again I will buy ear plugs!

I had to go back to Sainsburys to get the things I forgot yesterday!  They were even on the list – it’s not like me to miss things that are actually on the list.

Back at the boat we had a coffee, said our goodbyes to Gill and Phil and set off down the canal towards Sharpness.

However there was no sightseeing for me – I had a mountain of blackberries to make into jam!  I’ve never made jam before so armed with my BBC recipe I started.  All went well until I had to do the fridge test to see if it would set and the flippin stuff just would not set.  Eventually it was almost set so I put it in the jars and hoped for the best!

This was the mess in the boat as the jars were buried under all my spare pots and pans.

The trip up the canal was very windy but, other than that, it was a lovely day.

It's all right for some!

We pulled over just before Splatt Swing Bridge near Frampton on Severn.  I was intrigued by the name Splatt and discovered that the name is derived from the ancient plot of waste ground around the head of Frampton Pill, an inlet from the River Severn once used by small vessels supplying the village of Frampton-on-Severn.

We had some bread left over from the weekend so when a swan and eight cygnets came by we gave them some.  We don’t often see such a large brood at this time of year – normally some of them have been dinner for some other animal.

It was a glorious evening and the view from the boat over the Severn and the Forest of Dean was wonderful.  From the other side of the boat it’s Frampton on Severn.

8.81 miles
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