Slow Boat to Sharpness

If heaven is better than the Gloucester Sharpness Canal on a fine summer’s day, then, death, where is thy sting? Bring it on, I say! What a lovely cruise we had down there. Once south of Gloucester you’re on a broad, deep canal, with long straight sections, views of the Cotswolds on one side and the Severn estuary on the other side. Further down it becomes quite remote. The boats seem to be moving slower and slower, and it becomes clear than most of them are only moving for the sake of it; to charge the batteries or go to find somewhere for lunch. If you sit about staring at the water for long enough (which we did), the same boats come back the other way. We gave up recording our progress in miles per hour, and it became miles per day, and even at one stage days per mile, not moving anywhere for long periods.

Every day, as if on cue, boating friends and acquaintances appeared by boat or on the towpath, to provide us with just the right amount of company and entertainment. These are people we only know through boating. We’ve never seen their homes. We don’t know where they work. We never see their kids. We just meet, talk boats, drink beer and make plans. These plans generally revolve around how and when we can all become full-time water gypsies, and leave our old lives behind, Perrin-like, in a pile of former belongings left on the towpath.

On any map of England’s inland waterways, Sharpness is the end of the line in the bottom left hand corner. At Sharpness, a sea lock opens onto the Severn estuary, through which, should you be so foolhardy, you can progress to Avonmouth, and into Bristol, on to Bath, and eventually, if you are spared, to London. Of course there are many and various ways in which you could be dashed to pieces or swept away never to be seen again before you ever get to Bristol. On old maps it would say “Here be dragons”.

Sharpness does it’s best to live up to this reputation. During the day it is quiet and the streets are deserted, but, we are told, things can “liven up” at the weekends, and not in a good way. The docks still have regular trade, with coasters nipping up and down the estuary with coal, scrap metal and fertiliser. The last leaves an indefinable aroma hanging over the town.

Sharpness Dockers Club sits on a small rise overlooking the docks. The club looks like a redbrick cottage hospital or nursing home. It opens at 7.30pm prompt, and non-members are welcome. It’s packed most nights in the summer, especially at weekends, and I’d bet that hardly any of them are dockers. It sticks to what it does best; cheap beer and good food. Those in the know get there as the place opens and slap an order on the bar straightaway. The middle classes like us, brought up to be politely late, turn up, get a drink and think about what they’d like to eat for supper than night, and then order. Mrs Demon is not the fastest when it comes to decisions on food. But by 7.50pm we had ordered and settled down in the huge lounge, under the vast TV showing Sky Sports, peering round the collection of large men an small boys playing pool, to see the screen on the other side which appeared to be a security camera but actually allowed you to see the action in the skittle alley, out of sight round the corner.

By 9.45pm a diet of pure beer was taking its toll, and we enquired at the bar about progress on our meals. Just coming! was the reply. Sorry for the delay! But you were order number 91! The cook and two assistants served over 100 meals that night. Juicy steaks the size of mattresses soon appeared, as well-cooked and tasty as those served two hours earlier to the first customers. We staggered back to the boat for a good sleep. They say that New Year’s Eve is good at the club. Perhaps we’ll go back.