Across the water - The Tyndale Monument

Well sometimes I go out by myself and I look across the water...

Standing on the quayside at Lydney Harbour I can see the old Berkeley Nuclear Power Station on the right and in the middle of the flat hill to the left, just visible in this shot, the Tyndale Monument.  Here's a closer look...

That's Berkeley church tower in the foreground and North Nibley nestling in the hillside.  And as I look across the water, I think to myself, "What fun it would be to come on over, climb up the Tyndale Monument and look back towards Lydney." Last Monday, that's what I did.

My walk started in Wotton-under-Edge, which is about 8 miles from Lydney Harbour as the crow flies, but 31 by road. Such are the joys of living on the Severn Estuary.  I climbed through the woodlands of Wotton Hill, which must look lovely when the Spring flowers are blooming. On this sunny winter's day I contented myself by counting squirrels – 16 in all.

At the top of the hill are the Brackenbury Ditches – the remains of an Iron Age hill fort. Wanting to know more, I looked up the place on the Historic England website and learned that it's a Slight Univallate Hillfort. "Slight univallate hillforts," declares the website, "are enclosures of various shapes, situated on or close to hilltops and defined by a single line of earthworks, the scale of which is relatively small." See, I grow a little wiser every day!

From Brackenbury Ditches it's only a short walk to the Tyndale Monument. The 111ft high tower was built in 1866 in honour of William Tyndale, who translated the Bible into English, incurred the wrath of the Church and was strangled to death, then burned. His dying words were "Lord, open the King of England's eyes" and within four years his prayer was answered with publication of The Great Bible. But at what a cost!

History records that Tyndale was born in Stinchcombe, near Dursley, though historian Joyce Moss reckons that he was a Lydney boy. Well, whichever is true, his monument overlooks his birthplace.

It's a long way to the top of the tower...

... but the views from there are magnificent. This is the view looking back across The Severn towards Lydney.

Unfortunately (silly me) I didn't bring my camera with a zoom lens but here's a hazy enlargement, centred on Lydney Harbour, with Berkeley Power Station on the left.

The next time that I go out by myself and I look across the water, I can now say "I've been there!"

4½ miles