Exploring a Forgotten Island on the River Severn

Exploring the ghostly Alney Island, which lies just to the west of Gloucester.

I’m about a 10minute walk from the center of Gloucester this whole bit is called Westgate Leisure area we’re going to cross the river 7 now Head West slightly onto a bit of land that is actually completely surrounded by the river 7 it’s called Alie Island and the river 7

Splits at upper parting which just up the river that way and then it recombines further down at lower parting and the little island that’s formed in the middle of those two kind of branches of the river is called Al Island so we’re going to go and have a little look around it Now got roads on both sides got the westbound traffic on that sound side and the eastbound traffic on that side and then this little pathway slips neatly down the middle I think I’m now on alni Island this is part of the seven way which follows the river 7’s Banks let’s have a

Look what this sign says wow so these trees all of these trees here were planted in 1983 to Mark the 500th anniversary of the city of glester Charter of incorporation so you go all these people presumably donated money or maybe donated the trees themselves and here they are still standing Today that was silly thought it was going to be completely Frozen but my hand went through and now my hand is slightly Wet today Al the Island lies isolated you’ve got busy main roads going all around it you got the river 7 surrounding it on all sides but once in the not too distant past this would have been a very important location and that’s because this was traditionally the lowest point you could cross the

River 7 into Wales so we’re now going to go and look at one of the last bridges that crossed the seven before the modern Seven Bridge took responsibility for that If it wasn’t for all the car noise from the roads it could be in the middle of some forest or something I mean the uh foggy cold mistiness is definitely adding to the Atmosphere this is U Bridge or if you look at it on a map you’d probably think it was called over Bridge U Bridge was built by Thomas tford who designed it to replace another Bridge uh Tuda bridge that have been standing here on a similar site but slightly to the

South for two 300 years when this Bridge opened in the 1830s it was the lowest point you could cross the river 7 from England to Wales it stayed that way until the 1960s when the first suspension bridge was built across the river 7 further Downstream from here nowadays this

Bridge is no longer in use there’s a new road over here that everybody crosses on you can still walk along the old bridge there was a more Downstream crossing the chuda version but the problem with the chuda bridge is it had many many archers I think eight archers

Or something the sign back there said and so that made it really hard for ships to go any further than Gloucester if they wanted to go further up the seven they’d have to be small ships so this bridge was a huge Improvement on that one big single span Arch meant the

Ships could just come straight [Applause] through unfortunately once they built the bridge and when they released all of the temporary structure around it the whole Bridge sank by about 25 cm or so so for a few years they had to do various kind of fixes and changes until they decided

That it was safe enough to use for road traffic don’t build them like they used to right we’re now going to continue our adventure we’re going to go back to Aly Island we’re not going to actually cross this bridge back to Al Island and we’re going to start heading south towards the

Uh Al the island Nature Reserve so just now when we were stood on the bridge could see this Railway Bridge it carries the South Wales Railway line from Gloucester all the way to Cardiff and Beyond but this bridge is actually relatively new bridge and as well as U Bridge which was designed by Thomas tford there wasn’t just one big Victorian engineer who designed Bridges around here is Ard Kingdom Brunell himself wanted to get in on the ACT and so before this bridge existed there was

Another bridge that was built by Brunell and you can see the remains of it just here all this brick work here is part of the Old Railway Bridge and the old bridge used to cross pretty much in the the same place slightly more of an angle

Over there so you can just about see telford’s Bridge there U bridge for the road traffic and then the remains of brunell’s bridge So within 100 met of each other you’ve got two of the Victorian aro’s greatest Engineers with big engineering projects side by side unfortunately in the 1950s

Brunell’s Railway Bridge here was completely replaced by the new bridge which is the one in new Today so this nicely paved cycle path carries on around that way but we’re going to head down this way got telford’s Bridge got the Railway Bridge we’re here we’re going to walk around here back to the docks let’s Go well well well look who’s decided to join the party weather forecast said it’d be sunny for most of the middle of the day but this layer fine layer of mist and fog has been hiding it away I’m stood in what used to be a

Lock so there’s a wear just over to my right here and if ships wanted to pass through this bit they wouldn’t have been able to go down the wear cuz ships can’t go down wees so they would have gone through this lock so it’s been filled in now and it’s

Clearly no longer in use but you can see that at one point in time big ships from gluster docks would have sailed through here on the way out of the docks and Down the River see these big grooves here on both sides guess maybe that would have been where the lock Gates or something were this is the bit that we’ve just walked through just there and this is the we so the ship’s coming out of the docks wouldn’t have been able to go down the

We so instead they would have gone through this lock so we’re going this way and this map also shows the next point of Interest which is this Old Railway Bridge lanthony Bridge see there’s little moing posts where the boats would have tied up while they were waiting to go through the lock

Now it’s just on the side of the footpath but think how many massive ships must have been mored up to that at one point or Another see the river over here flowing down towards the wear that’s just down there and here the Old lanthony Railway Bridge that would have headed across only Island from brunell’s bridge back that we saw earlier headed across the island and into gluster docks and it would have taken Freight in and

Out of the docks over this bridge no longer in use now and in fact they’ve had to put some scaffolding and corrugated iron up to stop people from getting onto it because it’s probably very unsafe but yeah fast inting little bit of History though but it’s still very accessible and you can

Walk right underneath It see the old tracks on both sides here so they didn’t really bother kind of taking it up they just stopped using It Well I’ve made it to gluster docks very foggy gluster docks and that is the end of my journey so thank you for watching this video hope you’ve enjoyed this foggy tour of Al Island just to the west of Gloucester and uh yeah see you in the next One