Lydney Festival Weekend 27 28 June

Saturday morning we locked out at 09.00 in company with yacht Florence who were also en route to Lydney. We had some reservations about negiating the Severn, but we had read and read all we could about getting up the river, and had then decided that maybe we'd read too much, and we were a bit nervous about it. It was great though to pass under the Severn Bridges for the first time. We had the autohelm on, and as we passed beneath the Severn Bridge we encountered a huge patch of horrible little eddies. At this point Vince decided to go below, me thinking he was going to check the chart, but he doing something else. Unfortunately the autohelm could not cope with all the whirlpools and we ended up turning right off course, and I was thinking that the autohelm would right itself, just as Vince came back into the cockpit and gave me a right telling off for not paying attention! We then heard yacht Florence calling us to ask if we were OK, to which we had to reply that we were just having a "domestic".

After a well deserved beer and G & T we went ashore to investigate all that was going on. There were all kinds of tents selling various things and there was a sort of harbour tour going on that we joined. This was a sort of "guided walk" around the harbour and cliff top, and along the way there were all sorts of people doing various things - sort of street artists is all that I can think of to describe them. Helped by glorious weather, it was really good fun. At this point I will apologise for the videos, don't know what I did but I have spent so long trying edit them I have given up, so you will see a lot of feet and grass!

Alana moored along the harbour wall

Sunday morning dawned bright and sunny again, and only one of us had a hangover - the other having reached full level quite early the previous evening and had been very sensible and gone on the Cokes!

The lock gate opened quite early, before full tide, and we made the mistake of leaving almost as soon as the gate was opened (lahtough that was more by accident than by planning) so we struggled against the tide for the first hour or so. Once again the band was there, and just as we were going through the lock gates the band started to play "I Am Sailing" - it was quite moving really and almost bought a tear to my eye, as all the people were there on the harbour wall waving us off!



The trip back was fairly uneventful, and we just scraped back in to Cardiff probably with about an inch of water under the keels, on the 5.15 lock in.

All in all a fab weekend, and thanks to all at Lydney YC for a warm welcome and great hospitality, especially to Peter Lockwood and Bill Bayly. We thoroughly recommend this to everyone for next year, and if you can't go by boat then it is worth a visit by car!

Hope you've enjoyed our little videos, and apologies again for the rubbishy bits at the end of them. I have now learned how to work the camera properly!