Base Camp Journal - Getting stuck on a flooded battlefield in Gloucester.
Tewkesbury is a pretty village that retained much of its character from the beginning of the Tudor age, and has many pubs in the original buildings. The Black Bear, which was built in 1307, is one of them. There is a CMC site next to the Abbey, and that’s where Robby and I decided to spend the week.
As I’d learned much later, we’d pitched Bertha on the very spot where the Battle of Tewkesbury was fought, in 1471. The terrain makes the field a very unlikely place for a battlefield. Was the Abbey strategically important, for some reason?
As pointless as the War of the Roses was (in my opinion), I think history would nevertheless have been very different, had Henry Tudor been defeated: Without a British Empire and the reforms that followed the later civil war, I doubt the concept of an English monarchy, especially one that lived a fairytale existence, could have survived the political revolutions inspired by modernist thought and The Enlightenment. Britain would certainly have become a republic.
From what I gathered, in 1471, an exhausted Lancastrian army, having been forced to retreat from a failed attempt to cross the Severn elsewhere in Gloucester, was ambushed in Tewkesbury by roughly 6,000 Yorkists. A battle followed. Many of the Lancastrians fled, some trying to cross streams and rivers, and some no doubt clambering over hedges. Others claimed sanctuary in the Abbey, but Edward IV’s men captured and executed them anyway. A few of the casualties of the battle were taken to the stables at The Black Bear, which was used as a field hospital. That part of the pub is apparently haunted.
Today there are insignias of the houses of York and Lancaster here and there, and items of weaponry and armour in a few pub windows. The small, volunteer-run museum just around the corner from the high street, has many exhibits.
A superstitious person might say the souls of dead Lancastrians had their revenge, of sorts, this week. Despite what happened, I think we’re going to return there, maybe next summer, or the year after.
‘My, what a lovely place!’, I thought, when we arrived at Tewkesbury Abbey CMC site. We were on some green land, next to an abbey and a Tudor-themed town. The area is so quitessentially… Olde English. I could see the giant tower of the Abbey through the treeline, and the bells were ringing. Robby and I appeared to be the youngest people on the site, so it was very quiet. The staff are excellent, and they do look out for their customers, regularly checking all is okay across the site. Also - and this is important - there is a sushi restaurant-takeaway just slightly up road from the entrance, which I certainly recommend.
On our way to the pub, Robby noticed the modern buildings near the Abbey, including the CMC site’s reception and facilities buildings, were on struts that elevated them roughly two metres from the ground. It would appear the river overflows often enough, probably during the spring high tide, to warrant such a design choice.
An undefined dark mass of a thundercloud moved across the unusually hazy sky, and a storm was developing just as we were done setting things up.
To say it pissed down that afternoon would be the understatement of the year. The torrential downpour lasted two hours, punctuated by hailstones that came down with considerable force. I hadn’t seen anything like it in a decade. What a way to end summer!
Our pitch was slightly flooded afterwards. The ground remained surprisingly firm, and we could walk around the flooded parts, I pointed out to Robby, nonchalantly. If it’s not muddy, I’m not too bothered. He insisted on relocating to another pitch anyway.
Tewkesbury Abbey is impressive in size and intricacy, with it’s very high ceilings covered in artistically-crafted masonry, and the numerous stained glass windows. It’s the kind of place that invokes reverence in even the non-religious. The smell of incence within the Abbey reminded me of Christmas, as it’s a feature of Midnight Mass.
Oh, and the shop there sells hand-made wine, honey, various types of mustard and other hand-crafted items. Honey, lemon juice and a couple of paracetomol, mixed in a cup of boiling water, should be a good remedy for a cold.
Sunday afternoon was miserable, so we spent the afternoon in The Bell. It’s remarably chilled and homely for a Greene King establishment. I didn’t mind it. Nobody knows how old the building is, but it was a guest house for the Abbey, and it was renovated in the 1690s after being severely damaged by a fire.
Monday was a complete washout, with it raining consistently from the early hours until 21:00, alternating between heavy drizzle and showers, and depressingly dark gray. We went into Cheltenham anyway, and I took Robby to the Kinbou Japanese restaurant.
On our return, the river running past the Abbey had gotten much deeper. I thought it would take a lot for the river to rise another couple of metres and cause flooding. I thought nothing of it, until later that night.
Around 22:00, five motorhomes and caravans stopped on the roads near us, and there was a bit of activity. Something was up.
‘They can’t be coming on the site at this time.’, Robby said.
‘Nope. Something’s happened at the other end of the site. I’m taking a look.’
And so we made our way there, noticing the motorhomes previously there had gone.
‘Ah… shit… We might have a problem.’, I muttered, as the beam of my flashlight caught the surface of water that stretched far beyond the perimeter of the site, into the blackness. The river had overflown by more than eight metres, and we were standing at the edge of a pretty big lake. Looked quite deep too. The lake was going to get bigger, since we were downstream of somewhere that’s still experiencing heavy rain. The route into the site was already underneath it.
When we got back to Bertha, I stuffed my essentials - cigars, lighters, etc. into my coat, anticipating the site would be evacuated during the early hours. I stayed up most of the night, anticipating we might need to leave sooner than expected.
The site was evacuated the next morning. There wasn’t any danger of more flooding, but reservations needed to be cancelled because the main route to the site is impassable.
What a trip!