A Right Bore!

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In the grand tradition of, ‘Things to Do Before you Die’ we boldly set off last night.

We travelled first over the lumpy bumpy Cotswolds, whose true beauties are secreted away down tiny lanes well away from the rapacious eyes of the likes of us urban rapscallions.

At Newnham we found a car park and sat on a bench in the chill evening air as the light faded over the River Severn.

I’d wanted to see the Severn Bore.

The timetables promised a good sized one so we sat under the cathedral of the night sky aware of the hush of other isolated pockets of Bore watchers.

We heard it before we saw it.

But it was a low disappointing wave that rolled steadily by.

‘Well that was a bore!’ proclaimed The Teenager with typical understatement.

‘Perhaps it will be higher further up the river,’ I suggest. ‘Look it’s changed the direction of the river; the river is now flowing the wrong way. It’s raised the water level higher over those sand banks. Look,’ I say.

I’m trying to find something that will impress. I turn to science. ‘It’s a rare phenomenon,’ I gabble trying to find something, anything that will excuse this long expensive journey across country to see this singular unremarkable wave. ‘It’s the Atlantic Ocean!’ I pronounce as if this alone should be enough to induce adulation and ‘Ahhhhs!’

We drive higher up the road. At the Severn Bore Inn we have a chance to witness it all again.

‘Perhaps it will be higher here?’ I gush. 'The river's narrower.'

There are more people here, the atmosphere is one of playful anticipation. Everyone is watching the distant bank for the first signs of the breaking wave.

It comes low around the corner, late.

Someone is shining a strong beam from a torch. The beam is a meter behind the main wave that is hardly breaking at all. The water surges past. There is a boom as it hits something underneath the merry drinkers who are standing on a wooden platform.

‘Can I have the car keys?’ The Teenager asks flatly.

‘There are people in the water,’ I say tempting him to stay longer, trying to find something of interest.

They are surfers who have tried to ride the wave but who have found it was far too low for them too. They are flapping like performing seals and floundering.

‘Er, the keys?’ demands The Teenager.

‘Look, how they're being swept away. Look how strong the current is.’

The teenager is holding out his hand, ‘I’ll wait for you in the car,’ he says.

It’s a long journey home.

We get back home at about one in the morning.

I’m treated to every possible bore joke.

I'm made to promise that I won't drag him to see any more natural phenomena.

But for me some Celtic part of my soul felt that surge of water; and an ancestral primal sense of awe was awakened: as if mysteries were revealed and the gods walked close.

The power of it.

The wonder!

Ahhhhhh!

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