A cycle ride around Tewkesbury

We take the bikes around Tewkesbury, visit the abbey, rivers Severn and Avon and try to work out where the Lancastrians and Yorkists fought during the Battle of Tewkesbury in 1471, as the end of the Wars of the Roses.

So today we’re at Chukesbury. So we’re at a quite a pleasant caravan and motor home club site. It’s got nice facilities. And this is approximately also the location of the Battle of Chukesbury in 1471, 4th of May. Behind us, you can’t see it here, is it’s the Abbey. And uh we’re pretty much standing behind the I guess the left flank of the Lancashier defenders or the Lanceree forces. We’d have had Devon Shear in front of us and then in the coming down through the housing estate there we’d have likely had certainly on this side of the lines Richard of Gloucester later Richard III and the uh King Edward the fourth forces who were victorious in battle here on that day. So we’re going to have a cycle around and take a look at the place. Little pub there dates back to the 1300s, I believe. Very quiet today. There’s some very good bike paths around Cheeksbury. It’s quite a pleasure to cycle around here. So, we’re heading south. Both sides of the battle came from this direction headed north up to Shbury. This is a very interesting church. You seen the wooden spire on this? Wooden tower. I saw it in the distance actually. Lancastrians wanted to cross into Wales to join up with greater forces, but the only crossing point open to them since the one further south of here was barred to them was north of Chukesbury. And it was at Chukesbury the Lancastrians with the river behind them met their fate. Now, we could carry straight on to Chelham or roughly straight on. What we’ll do instead is turn right and there’s an old disused canal we can pick up. Follow the toe path and it goes through a nature reserve. So, we’ll have a look at that. Yeah, there are some nice pubs around this part of the world. Nice beer gardens. Oh, look. This says something, doesn’t it? Hello black and grapes there. Oh, that’s nice. Here’s another of those flood cakes. That’s There’s more food over there. Oh, look at the um that tree. Little hideyhole. We’re now heading north towards Chesbury. You can imagine Queen Margaret and her Lancastrian army heading up here trying to find a way to cross the river on the left which is a seven. But there’s no way to cross this side of Chukesbury. So they’re going to have to get about seven miles past Chukesbury before they can effectively get across. But before they get there, they get caught up by King Edward the Force through the Yorkans. The Lancastrians are moving north up here cuz they want to join up with their other forces which are in Wales and that’s the other side of the river. So the battle was pretty much up here and um to the right and then when when the when the Lancashians were routed by the Yorkists, they were all trying to flee this way. I think a lot of them drowned down here in the river if they weren’t slaughtered. Actually, this area is right. I think it’s called something like the bloody meadow or something like that because it was just so red with the blood of slaughtered Lancastrians as they tried to escape in this direction past Jukesbury and or across the river. There’s several trails marked on the the map related to the battle. So you can visit the areas affected apart from obviously those on private land or the sewage works here. Biggest I think it’s biggest reenactment event or free free entry reenactment event in Europe um which is next weekend. So this road I don’t think this road was there in 1471. The road behind us was because there was a um there was a ford back there putting on the height of the river. Apparently, that’s the largest Norman Tower in Europe or remaining Norman Tower. And it actually is huge. It used to have a wooden spire on top. It’s nice.