A MOTORIST felt the full force of the River Severn on Saturday morning as their car caught fire when the river burst its bank and flooded Minsterworth.

Lydney Docks also took a battering as witnesses saw the tide gush well above the dock walls and cover paths as well as reach the flood barrier gate.

Hundreds of spectators lined the banks of the River Severn from Lydney to Minsterworth to watch the five-star bore at the weekend, but the height of the tide at 10.3m proved too much for the banks at Minsterworth.

An eyewitness told the Review: "I was at the Severn Bore pub when the water came over and my friend and I had to quickly jump the fence. As I made my way back to my van I asked somebody if the road ahead towards Gloucester was still open as I planned to go that way afterwards. He said it was closed and a car was on fire. I drove as far as I could up to the section of the road where you can overtake and spotted fire crews and police men pushing a Peugeot 206 out of the middle of the road into the lay-by.

"That was when police decided to close off the road and started diverting traffic."

A spokesman for Gloucestershire Fire and Rescue said: "The car drove into floodwater and caught fire – it wasn't treated as suspicious."

Police officers on the ground and in the air spent the weekend monitoring the river's water level and closed the A48 several times when there was potential for flooding.

A police spokesman said: "A judgement call was made when it was believed it would flood and it was then closed as a preventative measure. When it had flooded and the levels came down again it was reopened. There was also a safety implication from the number of people watching the bore, and this fed into the decision as to when to close it."

Hundreds more people packed out the river banks on Sunday morning following the news coverage of the bore on Saturday.

There were several reports of flooding in Newnham and Broadoak as the tide reached homes in Church Road. A Broadoak reader said: "The flooding wasn't due to the high tide of the bore but from rain fall that was running down the hills and had no where to go."

Weather forecasters warn that further bad weather is expected towards the end of the week.