19/08/2026
Yesterday I walked the Sharpness to Gloucester Canal again — 16.3 miles and, judging by my legs this morning, I definitely know I've done it! 🤣
This was my fourth time walking this route, this time with my sister and brother-in-law who are training for the West Highland Way. I was explaining to them along the way why this particular walk means so much to me.
It's a beautiful walk, but it's also full of fascinating history. There's the site of the old Severn railway bridge that once linked Sharpness with South Wales, the Purton ship graveyard where old vessels were deliberately beached to help protect the banks of the Severn, and the docks and remnants of industry that appear along the route.
But for me there's another story here.
I did this walk for the second time just a few months after my breakdown in 2019, at a point when I was trying to make sense of myself and what had happened.
Somewhere along the canal I passed a narrowboat called Y-Worry.
For some reason those two words stopped me in my tracks.
I'd spent years feeling as though I was searching for something without really knowing what it was. And suddenly I realised that perhaps what I'd been searching for all along was simply the real me.
It sounds such an obvious thing written down now, but at the time it was quite a moment. I remember wondering why it had taken me so many years to understand something so simple.
There's another reason this landscape has stayed with me.
For part of the route you're effectively walking between two very different bodies of water. On one side is the mighty River Severn — powerful, turbulent and capable of pulling you in. On the other is the Gloucester & Sharpness Canal — still, gentle and calm.
I've always thought of that stretch as a little like my experience of depression.
It's very easy to get pulled towards the turbulent water and feel as though you're drowning. On the other side is calmness and stillness. And there you are, walking the path between the two, trying to stay somewhere down the middle and not be pulled too far one way or the other.
I find it quite remarkable that a landscape can teach you something about yourself if you give yourself enough time to not
