Summary
A canoeist says he almost got stuck and could have drowned in the perilous River Severn silt near Gloucester Docks . Paul Dunwell, 70, is now calling for urgent action to warn others of the risk, which he fears is life-threatening.
Details
He completed the final 55 miles of a 140-mile river route from Welshpool to Gloucester with a 73-year-old friend last week – but says it could have ended in tragedy as he navigated “thigh-deep mud” and clung on to “rotten” tree branches as a last resort to get to dry ground.
It had taken the two experienced canoeists, who met over 50 years ago while in the Army and remain exceptionally fit, seven days spread over several years to complete whole route. But the hardest part of their journey was at the very end when they got into difficulty and spent an hour struggling to get out of the river at Gloucester.
They had been warned nine miles upstream from Gloucester when they passed the last working lock, but they say they could have never predicted how dangerous it would be. Mr Dunwell said: “Just before the Gloucester lock there is, on the wall to the east, a set of steps. There is no handrail whatsoever and the mud on these steps is about six inches deep and slippery.
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“So if anybody wanted to exit there with a canoe they’d struggle to get any purchase on anything, especially with a 12-foot three-seater canoe like mine.” He said they recognised the danger and opted to sweep downstream past Gloucester Lock and look for somewhere else to land “before being taken into the dire mess about 200 metres beyond that where the Severn is impassable”.
Mr Dunwell recalled: “With sheer walls on that eastern side we had to look to the west bank.
“Clearly there was a band of mud that stretched two to five metres from the water to quite a wall of largely-rotten trees, behind which there was a steep bank that might have been 10m high, after which there is another line of trees, then around 30m of nettles and undergrowth before one can reach a road.” They opted to run the canoe nose at speed and 90 degrees onto the narrowest band of mud on the Alney Island side of the river, which he said was about two metres wide.
“I probed it with a paddle,” he said. “The mud seemed to be atop firmer ground, maybe six inches below it. So I stepped out, still gripping the canoe.
Report source: Gloucestershire Live
