At high tide on the Severn Estuary, we set off on a voyage that navigates one of the highest and most challenging tides in the world. On an early Novembers’ morning Captain Eric Witheridge, artist Steve Geliot and I (Eleanor) left Lydney Harbour to travel under the Severn bridges, along the North Somerset coast and finishing our exhilarating seven hour journey in South Wales. 

This historically important trade route has been navigated throughout history, before railways and the industrial revolution changed our landscape forever. Sailors worked with the cyclical rhythm of the tides navigating these hugely challenging routes, in all weathers, light and dark, with astonishing skill.

Experiencing this historic route allowed me to see a familiar landscape become unfamiliar and unexpected, seeing it instead through deep water channels, wind directions and navigational charts.

This journey was the starting point for my research and thinking around displacement, our changing landscape and our contemporary and historic connection to place.

Photographs by Steve Geliot and Eleanor Goulding