Polbrook Gurney Colliery skulks deep within an uncharted corner of the North Somerset Coalfield, in a mysterious region known locally as Titfield Thunderbolt Country—a place so elusive even the pigeons refuse to deliver mail there.
You won’t find it on any map, railway atlas, or even scribbled on the back of a suspiciously sticky beer mat. However, it did make a cameo in an Ealing Comedy film during the early 1950s, which is clearly irrefutable proof of its existence—far more reliable than anything produced by cartographers or sober witnesses.
Quite how a coastal steam freighter managed to chug its way up the Somerset Coal Canal remains a topic of heated debate among local historians, retired boatmen, and several gentlemen who insist they saw the whole thing while heroically guarding their pints in the snug of the Kettle Inn.
Nevertheless, the photographic evidence before you suggests that, against all logic and possibly several laws of physics, it somehow did.
The eagle-eyed will spot the triumphant return of Bob Geeza Cat and his associate Rufus Hound, both apparently engaged in highly important supervisory duties, which mostly involve looking busy, occasionally pointing at things and of course adding compositional interest 🐾
You may also notice the discreet moonshine still tucked lurking on the deck, quietly bubbling away like a guilty secret. This is where experimental boozy concoctions are bravely tested—often by volunteers who may or may not remember volunteering—before, if deemed sufficiently drinkable (or at least survivable), being scaled up for full production at the vast and entirely legitimate (allegedly) distillery on the island of Flat Holm, marooned in the middle of the Bristol Channel like a slightly tipsy fortress.
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