Tewkesbury Abbey Club Site, Gloucestershire

We started our sojourn in Tewkesbury with a long list of touring destinations, some pushing the boundaries of distance, and all pushing the boundaries of tolerance. I am only too aware that I suffer the modern character flaw of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and this sometimes causes minor friction when touring plans conflict. I want to do it all and my touring mate, who shares almost all of my interests, frequently suggests that I pull my head in, in the nicest possible way of course.  

So with that in mind, we agreed on a modest version of one of my longer itineraries, a day out on the River Wye, starting with a visit to Ross-on-Wye.

We caught sight of this little township a few days ago when we motored down the M50 before heading to Hay-on-Wye. Ross (in its abbreviated form), a small market town of just over 10,000 folk, nestles above a loop of the River Wye, high on a sandstone cliff although I do question the use of the word “cliff”; I guess its all relative.

The township is delightful, with many Tudor timbered houses clustered around the striking 17^th century Market Hall, which today was full of second hand books for sale. Actually it was in this stall that I fell into converstaion with a local woman after encouraging her to buy Bill Bryson’s “At Home” and learned that she had spent seven years in Auckland in the 1960s. She recocognised my Kiwi accent, something one hardly celebrates although I am proud of having better grammar than England’s  Joe-average you hear on the televison.  In fact it is amazing how often one falls into conversation with a local who has a relative living in New Zealand, or who travelled recently to New Zealand. It is all the more amazing when you consider how unwelcome we Kiwis are in this country; better to be a Pole or Romanian, than a colonial Kiwi; I am reminded everytime I come through immigration that I must be gone within six months.

Ross on Wye celebrates two heros, neither appearing anywhere else in commonly known history. John Kyrle (1637 – 1724), a wealthy philanthropist and town planner, leased a hillock by the church where he laid out gardens that he called The Prospect and a clifftop walk, for local people to enjoy. Tributes celebrate “his community involvement, his modest life style and charitable works. He settled disputes, aided the poor and sick, supported schools and left the beautiful ‘Prospect Walk’ with a fountain and garden for the citizens of Ross”; these are the words printed on the wall of a pub named “The Man of Ross” adjacent to those gardens.

The other local hero, Dr John Edgerton started The Wye Tour in 1745, a two day boat tour to Chepstow, with a stopover at Monmouth, for writers, poets and ladies and gentlemen of leisure, from his vicarage here in the town. Unknowingly he started a trend that became a landscape and artistic movement; The Picturesque,  that took the place of the big European OE. Fans of this tour included Wordswoth and Turner, creators of verse and landscape who did much to promote the area.

We spent some time wandering about the very comprehensive commercial centre of the town, before setting off down to the river on foot, walking downstream to Bridstow and beyond, passing the remains of the privately owned Wilton Castle on the opposite river bank. Eventually the trail diminished to one for the committed, a narrow path between nettles and wheat fields; there we turned and headed back upstream.

Early afternoon, we made our way back up into the town to the car park, and then travelled downstream again, on the eastern side of the river, past Walford then across the bridge to Goodrich, to the English Heritage administered Goodrich Castle, which seems to grown out of the rock on which it was built.

The keep is Norman, but the red sandstone outer walls date from the 13^th and 15^th centuries.  The present ruined condition of this border castle is the result of a single violent event in 1646, an exception of the castle’s largely peaceful existance.

Godric Mappeson, who left his name to the castle with the skewed “Goodrich”, built the first version in about 1100, although nothing remains of that effort. Later came Richard de Clare, known as “Strongbow” who built the Great Tower, the oldest surving building. This character later became famous for invading Ireland in 1170.

In 1204 William Marshall, known as “the best knight in all the realm” was recorded as owner of Goodrich. Marshall, the Earl of Pembroke was given the castle by King John, he whose body lies in the Worcester Cathedral, to partially compensate him for lost lands on the continent.

But it was the ownership of the De Valances that featured in the audio guided tour today.  William De Valance owned Goodrich from 1247 to 1296.

De Valance was a French nobleman from Poitiers, half brother to  Henry III who was “rewarded” with a marriage to Joan de Munchensi, one of the heiresses to the Marshal estate. The marriage made Valance immensely rich and gave him the title of Earl of Pembroke. Valence was not particularly popular with other nobles, who viewed him as a foreign upstart. Valence’s rebuilding of Goodrich sent a powerful message that he was here to stay, that he was a cultured man with the highest connections and was not to be trifled with.

William De Valance completely modernised the castle and much of what is left today was built under his direction. Within the stern military exterior of high walls, towers, barbicans and drawbridges, he created a luxurious and extensive set of buildings for his large household and important  guests. 

When William died, his widow Joan sometimes stayed at Goodrich for months at a time, despite it was more fashionable to relocate one’s dwelling place up to eighty times a year. (We have nothing on those medieval gypsies!) Alas the castle would only stay in the De Valance family for one more generation.

In 1326, the Talbots came to own Goodrich, Gilbert Talbot fought with Henry V at Agincourt in 1415, and his brother John, labelled  “the terror of the French”, was made Earl of Shrewsbury, a title that remained en famille. The castle remained in the family’s hands right through to 1616 when Gilbert Talbot died with no male heir and Goodrich passed into the hands of Henry Grey, Earl of Kent, however the Greys chose not to live at Goodrich, instead renting the castle to a series of tenants.

For much of the first English Civil War of 1642 – 46, Goodrich was held for King Charles I by Henry Lingen and a garrison of one hundred and twenty soldiers and fifty officers. By 1646, it was the only royalist stronghold in the area. In March that year, John Birch, the local Parliamentarian commander, directed a night raid on the castle stables, burnig the buildings and stealing the horses, thus temporarily halting royalist attacks in the district. Three months later, he returned from other operations, determined to capture the castle or destroy it.

The royalist rejected Birch’s demands that they surrender, and he was forced to try other means, Birch ordered a local forge to cast a new mortar, later nicknamed “Roaring Meg”, capable of firing an explosive shell of 85 kilo. By bombarding the north-west corner of the castle and digging mines through the rock, Birch brought down one tower and was ready to attach with his army. On 31 July, the royalists surrendered, marching out as prisoners.

Though badly damaged, the castle remained inhabitable. For this reason the walls and battlements were deliberately “slighted” and the buildings unroofed. The history of Goodrich as a functioning castle had come to an end.

We enjoyed our visit to the castle very much, glad to have taken advantage of the audio guides, and glad the fine weather afforded the glorious views from the top of the Great Tower up and down the Wye Valley.

It was time to head home but we were keen to travel back on a route other than that we had taken  in the morning, mainly on the M50 we had travelled some days ago and which we would travel again in a few more days as we headed to South Wales. 

We followed the A4234 downriver to Lower Lybrook, then back over the Forest of Dean  through a valley that was once the site of a local iron and coal industry, a pub named “Collier’s Arms” alerting us to the possibility. We followed the A4136 still up through the Forest, until we joined the ring road that skirts Gloucester, then headed back up to Tewkesbury on the A38.

Today Chris was stung yet again by one of the local bugs and consumed surely more anti-histamine tablets than one should; I cooked dinner and left him to doze before the abysmal soccer game between Belgium and England. There is football frenzy  all about, although the English don’t do car flags like the Australians do. Perhaps it is just as well they keep a lower profile, based on this evening’s efforts.