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Gloucester Boat Jumble 2nd April 2006, by Rose 

           It didn’t feel like a year since we last went to the Gloucester Jumble!  
      Rain was forcast, the sky was cloudy , but we headed off for Gloucester Historical Docks.  
   Coming from the Midlands, it's anyones guess how long it takes, and this year, because the traffic was light, we arrived too early. 

The thing with jumbles, is you need to get there early, else all the good stuff goes. The parking was well organised, signposted and marshals directed you. Best of all its FREE.

We immediately realised that whereas in previous years, you queued outside the railings , where the gate was locked till 10 am; this year, the whole thing had been moved over to a car park , and that meant you could get into the site, and visit the loo, and get some breakfast in the café next to the waterways museum.   We had a rather nice bacon roll and cup of tea. People started to arrive, though the rain wasn’t far away.




 Come to think of it, it was all over in the car park last year, but this year, the building works were well under way, It's all high price flats, on the side of the dock. Its rather spoiled the old feel of the place. The beginning of progress was when they moved the museum of packaging out about 5 years ago. You can still use your entry ticket to the jumble to gain access to the waterways museum, so that was doing good business. You can get into the museum shop quite easily, where theres the usual assortment of high price gifts and books.
It looks like the majority of the old warehouses are to be converted to flats, the  view across the dock will be changed drastically. Once they’re all completed, I don’t know what will happen to the future jumbles.
 

There were a fair amount of stalls, but I think for me, what was missing was the individual “jumble” stalls. You used to see lots of boat items, second hand. Sinks, toilets, brass windows, etc etc I thought it was mainly trade this year, various boat related things, but little in the way of jumble.  There were spaces where it looked like stalls had been planned, but hadn’t arrived. It was quite windy on the dock, and things were blowing over and stall holders looked a bit cold. There weren’t really that many people there.

 These women were making rag rugs-->

In all, it was ok, but a bit more sunshine would have improved the atmosphere.  I much prefer the real jumble stalls rather than the ones with lots of cheap screws and  household stuff that you can see on any market.






We went and had dinner round at the pub. And had a look at the shops in the very nearby centre. You get rubber stamped when you go out, but we didn’t bother to go back in once we left. 
 






We did buy some rope though, and I loved this exhibit, life jackets for pets. 

 

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