Purton and the River Severn
Walking around Purton on the River Severn is almost literally rather than figuratively a pop-up experience. The biggest riverine boat-grave in Britain: old boats and barges rammed into the river bank to try and keep it stable.
And there are the boats: rusting, mouldering, skeletal and cadaverous, beached in a liminal half-solid, half squelching aqueous mud-scape. There they lie, some staring out mutely at the rushing river. Others are slip-sliding away to oblivion.
After our trip in the Bongo, we drove back along the A38 to find a spot for the night. Where better than Arlingham?
We camped at Weston Farm, right next to field after field of orchards, and field after field of medieval ridge and furrow: an open-air pop-up of corrugated pasture, and sea-waves of grassland rolling between and across the hedgerows (in a manner or manor of speaking).
After a day’s walking near the river, we sat on the Severn’s banks, as the sun set, with Billy the horse a haunting silhouette against the red-streaked sky. We lay back and listened to the waters, stared up at the swallows, still high in the sky, until our reverie was disturbed by the pounding of feet.
“Is the tide coming in or going out?”
We said we weren’t sure.
He said, “I run across the river near here.”
This seemed improbable but who are we to doubt the words of a local: an almost strangely mythopoeic figure, redolent of ‘The Other’ in the walks, accounts and poems of Edward Thomas.
Preoccupied by that quicksilver reflection, I forgot to ask him how had he learnt the safe route across this treacherous river with its fast flowing second-highest tidal range in the world and with its constellation of eddies and currents and with its deathly quick-sands.
I was too late.
He was singing the praises of the white sands upstream at Longney, as he ran upstream himself along the pathway, his voice growing fainter as the sun sank further. “There’s always a bit of water on the other side,” were the last words I caught.
I pondered.
Was this a mythopoeic figure, redolent of ‘The Other’ in the walks, accounts and poems of Edward Thomas? A carrier of oral culture in this digital age: a young man carrying the lore of the river passed on through generations since time immemorial – or was he having a laugh at our incomers’ expense?
You might have expected such a seasoned wader to have known if the tide was ebbing or flowing. Or perhaps this was the usual greeting for and from riparian folk such as he (again, going back to time immemorial).
And the white sands at Longney? What of those? ‘Beautiful but dangerous,’ I read later …
But here, at Arlingham, if he runs across to the other side, he will follow in the wake of Roman legions … and …
He, an Egyptian, an auxiliary;
She, secret- keeper for the Dobunni,
Had arranged to meet by the sacred oak,
Sheltered and hidden from keen Roman eyes
By dense, dark woods of smooth barked beech.
He, a skilled boatman from the River Nile,
And now, deserter from the garrison
At Kingsholm; beaten, whipped, lashed and abused
By officers for drunken amusement,
Found silent sympathy, trust and love
From this mute young woman at the wine shop;
She, like him, violated just for fun
And entertainment – forced to play the fool,
Was also a skilled, rehearsed dissembler,
For inside that apparently dumbstruck
Mind was mysterious Druidic lore,
Hidden safe within a tribal dreamscape.
She, beyond Roman suspicion and law,
Led him by the hand, as the red sun’s rays
Sank behind the high shrine to Mercury;
She, night-navigator of marshland paths,
She, sure-footed through the night-rustling forest;
They, sheltered and sleeping through the daylight hours,
They, slipping unseen past messenger posts,
Up the eastern scarp, then down to the river.
He, Nile-native, expert boatman, stared west
Across the Severn to the Silures –
Their boat eased its way with gentle paddle
Across that broad swathe of dangerous water,
Until exhausted, they breathed freedom.
Three centuries later, loyal-subjects,
Their children’s lineage, dark-skinned Britons,
Were destined to fight for Rome and Glevum
Against Anglo-Saxon invading migrants,
Who steadily renamed the landscape,
Whose toponyms we wander through
Creating this open-air museum,
This riparian cabinet of curiosities,
This riverine pop-up museum.
(Arlingham Purton Weston Longney)
‘A temporary exhibition carefully curated, but with changing displays created by visitors with a widening circle of participants: a sort of curated happening but with serendipitous happenstance: an inclusive community show and tell with artefacts and memories and texts and photos and artwork.’