THE intrepid voyage and adventures of the Dutch barge Wye Invader are over – at least until the New Year!

Riverside residents rubbed their eyes in disbelief when the 135ft long ship nudged her way, sometimes stern first, down the Wye two weeks ago, negotiating rapids and bridges is style.

She has spent over 20 years on a mooring in Hereford but is now on her way to the Severn and a dry dock, probably at Sharpness, for a below water health check.

Skippered by Frank Barton, the man who had taken her upstream in 1989, the Invader is now safely moored at Symonds Yat awaiting part two of her voyage to the Severn sea.

Captain Barton explained that he and his crew – Andy and Paul – had waited for months for the floodwater conditions they had needed to make the voyage.

Turning the vessel to travel down stern first was, he said, all part of the plan as it gave much more control especially when passing beneath bridges.

" It's all about doing it safely and doing it is stages," he said. The Invader, he said, drew only three feet of water and had made the trip downstream with the river in flood and levels around eight feet above the summer average.

The plan is that in the New Year, and again depending on conditions, to take her down to Tintern and then on to the Severn and, most likely, to Sharpness, though Bristol was also an option.

The vessel, he said, was fully insured. She is owned by a finance company.