Woolly says – It had been a hard couple of weeks, with Jo consigned to a hospital bed…she’s ok now…leaving me and Hansome Jack to run all things glamping with a bit of help from Zoe and the team that works here. Once Jo had returned to the fold, I decided that she needed a trip out to cheer her up and having consulted my list of possible places to visit I came up with a day that would give the Corgi a good walk and two places of interest.

With the sat nav powered up we headed through Gloucester and over to the banks of the River Severn for the first part of the day, sadly google had got the post code wrong and we arrived at the main working docks of Sharpness which was not the place we were heading for, a quick leap out of the car for the handsome fella to have a quick wee and for the human to ask for directions to our actual destination and we headed up river to the Purton Hulks or Purton Ships’ Graveyard for which it is better known.

Having parked alongside the canal we wandered the towpath finally finding some information and the first of the boats in the graveyard.

Eighty six boats and ships were deliberately beached beside the River Severn near Purton in Gloucestershire in the early 1950’s to reinforce the riverbanks. A riverbank collapse in 1909 led to concerns that the barrier between the river and the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal would be breached. Old vessels were run aground and soon filled with water and silt to create a tidal erosion barrier. The vessels included steel barges, Severn trows and concrete ships. The boats came from throughout the British Isles and were built in the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th.

Since 2000, archaeological investigations have been undertaken to find out more about the vessels and their states of decay. Each hull has an explanatory label to commemorate what it has done to shore up the banks, with one barge also being scheduled as an ancient monument and several included in the National Register of Historic Vessels. Other vessels that were used included the schooner Katherine Ellen which was impounded in 1921 for running guns to the Irish Republican Army (IRA), the Kennet Canal barge Harriett, and ferrocement barges built in World War II. The last boat was beached in 1965, and the site now forms the largest ship graveyard in mainland Britain.

It made for a most interesting walk as we tried to find as many ship skeletons as we could, some had completely disappeared into the bank, and a few found us standing on them before realising that they were actually there.

Scanning the tall grasses, we could see small indications that a boat was in that spot whilst others were still identifiable as ships.

A mile of so later and we did seem to have run out of hulls to admire so with Hansome Jack leading the way we headed back along the canal towards the car and our next stop off.

A few short miles away was the home of one Dr Jenner.

Known as the Edward Jenner Museum, in the small town of Berkeley, is a grade II* listed early 18th century building called the Chantry, famous as the home of Edward Jenner FRS, physician, surgeon and pioneer of smallpox vaccination, and now used as a museum.

Edward Jenner bought the property, owned by the Weston family, in 1785, and moved there before his marriage to Catherine Kingscote in 1788. Jenner planted ivy that in later years grew up the sides of the adjacent church tower, and a grapevine in a vinery built against the Chantry. He also had the Reverend Mr Ferryman build a rustic hut at the bottom of the garden where Jenner treated the poorer families in the district. Jenner later did vaccinations in it and referred to it as “the Temple of Vaccinia”.

Jenner was living at the Chantry when he conducted the first ever vaccinations in 1796 and 1798 which showed the potential for the control of smallpox. Although Jenner briefly maintained homes in Cheltenham and London the Chantry remained his principal residence until his death in 1823. In 1876 Jenner’s descendants sold the house to the Church of England, who used it as the local vicarage. Until 1985 when the Chantry was purchased by the Edward Jenner Museum, dedicated to the work of the doctor and wider immunology and funded by a Japanese businessman, Ryoichi Sasakawa, who donated a significant sum to enable the acquisition. Restoration work was gradually carried out over the following years, allowing more of the building to be opened to the public.

The outside made for quite an imposing house and gave us a small peek into the gardens which we would explore shortly.

Inside the museum we were greeted by a lovely lady who took Jo’s money and directed us towards the first of the five rooms on show. The dining room looked very formal with its portraits on the walls and a small collection of the Dr’s tools.

Next door was a sitting room where Jenner and his wife and three children would have relaxed playing music with the Doctor on the violin and his daughter on flute.

Some small display cases showed off some of his personal effects and correspondence.

Heading back into the hall the mutt led the way upstairs to a room which gave us all sorts of information on how Jenner had discovered the small pox vaccine with some pretty gruesome pictures of people with the ‘speckled monster’ as small pox was known.

Next door told how from this one small place in England the vaccine had spread across the world and how it still influenced the vaccinations that we have today.

Back downstairs and we found the Dr’s study furnished with his belongings as in 1823 with a huge desk where so much of his work was done.

Outside we passed the greenhouses that held a large vine which had been taken as a cutting in 1765 from Hampton Court before arriving in the medicinal garden with it small but most impressive obelisk in the centre.

Each bed of plants was grown to aid a different type of sickness including coughs and colds and digestion which Jenner would have used in his general practice.

We found ourselves in the main garden of the house which had a number of smallpox inspired sculptures to look at as we walked.

Tucked away at the back of the garden was the famous Temple of Vaccinia, a rustic, thatched-roof hut where he offered free vaccinations against smallpox to the poor. It served as the world’s first vaccination clinic and is considered a birthplace of public health. For such a small building it had done an immense amount of good across the world.

With all things Jenner completed we turned our attention to food, walking along the town high street which had some interesting looking buildings but sadly nothing open to feed us, with tummies rumbling we asked a passing person who directed us to the kitchens at the castle.

Woolly says – The idea of a castle as well filled my heart with joy but that was not to be on todays visit as upon enquiring at the café whilst ordering our food we found that the castle and grounds, except for the café area, was not doggy friendly and it was way to hot to leave the moulting one in the car, so having to be a brave mammoth I sat on my hopes and gobbled up my lunch before Jack could ask to share it.