Volume Twelve - Pre-Victorian to the Present Day - further aspects - The Bristol Channel District Guide - selected articles - [1934 Edition] . . . .

The trip usually takes about three hours, out and home, the distance traversed up the Severn depending upon tidal and other conditions. Reaching the mouth of the Avon, we enter Kingroad, and the steamer's course is then shaped in a north-westerly direction up the broad expanse of water known as the Severn's estuary.

Over on the port side we have the Denny Island, and on the Monmouthshire coast the Gold Cliff, with the Welsh mountains looming up behind ; on our stern quarter Portishead is seen, while in the distance ahead we may distinguish, amongst other spots, the rising ground of Chepstow Park and the Wyncliff, the latter 970 feet high.

The Severn is noted for its fine salmon, and also for the height and velocity of its tides, causing a remarkable phenomenon known as the " Severn Bore. "

Upon an old brass in the chancel of Gold Cliff Church are recorded some terrible consequences of an immense tidal wave which swept up the channel in the seventeenth  century, when " the flood did flow to the edge of this same brass, " and " xxii people was in this parish drowned."

The Severn has its legend. Sabrina, a guiltless damsel, " flying the mad pursuit of her enraged step-dame, " as Milton says, jumped into the Severn, but

The water-nymphs, that in the bottom played,
Held up their purl'd wrists, and took her in,
Bearing her straight to aged Nereus' hall. "

Nereus at once took compassion upon her and made her goddess of the river.

Proceeding, we rapidly approach an extensive reef situated on the Gloucestershire side near Redwick, known as the English Stones, which is an island at low water.

Upon these stones during the civil wars of Charles I, a Royalist ferryman, having safely ferried the King over the river, landed a number of Cromwell's soldiers, who were in pursuit of him, and left them to be drowned by the rising tide, an act which caused Cromwell to abolish the ferry. That is the story, at any rate, but it is not well authenticated.