In the month before we had our frozen embryo transfer back in 2015 (which ended up working) we had a couple of good holidays. One road trip after Easter from North Wales back home via the Severn Valley Railway and Stratford upon Avon. The other a long weekend in Barry Island seeing all the Gavin and Stacey sights (which I did actually manage to write a blog post about back in 2017). I took lots of pictures in lots of places and then never really found time to share them. This is one of the things I was going to write about.
So did you know you can get out onto the old 1966 Severn Bridge and (if you really want to), walk all the way across it? (or at least you could back in 2015, I haven't actually been back to check since so this whole blog post could be misinformation).
Anyway, drive to Severn View Services (which is accessible from both directions on the M48) and park in the car park. From there you can take a short walk to the offical Severn Bridge viewpoint for great views of the bridge and water. Once you've finished at the viewpoint walk back towards the services building (keeping the building on your left) and on your right, there's a little public footpath down some steps which takes you over the motorway. On the other side, turn right onto Bridge Access Road and then you can walk out onto the bridge. If you really wanted to, you could stroll all the way across to Chepstow.
We didn't go that far across, just far enough to see the views and take some pictures. It's pretty chilly up on the bridge and also, far more bouncy than you'd expect!
There's a good bit of history about the bridge on the
Institute of Civil Engineers website - it was completed in 1966 replacing the Aust car ferry which could only take 19 vehicles at a time. By the mid 1990's it was carrying over 20,000 vehicles a day hence why a second bridge was needed. The Second Severn Crossing (officially known as the Prince of Wales Bridge) opened in 1996 but sadly there's no public footpaths across that one!
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