Day 54 Tewkesbury to Gloucester – Tuesday 5 July

Distance 14.64 miles, cumulative 926.07 miles, time 6 hrs, walking time 5 hrs 15 mins, pace 2.8 mph, B&B The New Inn Hotel.
Tewkesbury showed few signs of the floods it had suffered but there was plenty of construction activity improving the flood defences. Tewkesbury is a medieval town and was preparing for it’s medieval week of celebrations. All the shops and many houses were displaying medieval banners. We ate at the Wetherspoons last night.

The paths had been improving in Worcestershire but as we entered Gloucestershire the footpaths became hard going. We finished the day covered in nettle rash and scratches and we were both a little teasy by the time we reached Gloucester. We had negotiated broken stiles, barbed wire, electric fences, overgrown paths and fallen trees. The route along the Severn Way from the north into Gloucester leaves a very poor impression of the City. The saving grace for the day was the glorious sunny weather.

Once in the City things improve and the recently renovated and developed docks provide leisure facilities and a shopping complex. We had a lunch in a city centre Wetherspoons ‘The Regal’ built in an old cinema and an afternoon coffee in the dockside Wetherspoons ‘The Lord High Constable of England’. We should point out that other pubs are available. Our friend Ryan gets quite touchy about this probably as he works for Heavitree Brewery, an Exeter based company which no longer brews beer but has many pubs in the South West. 

So just for Ryan we do like Heavitree Brewery’s excellent pubs especially the Passage House Inn at Topsham.

We are staying in a lovely old hotel in the centre of Gloucester which was the first Berni Inn to open and the last to close. They still serve a good steak. It was also the place were the unfortunate Lady Jane Grey was proclaimed Queen in 1553. She was Queen for only nine days. We will not repeat the story here but it did not end well for her.