Expensive to cross river -- and gloomy (5)
I believe the answer is:
drear
'gloomy' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'expensive to cross river' is the wordplay.
'expensive' becomes 'dear' (I've seen this before).
'to cross' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'river' becomes 'r'.
'dear' placed around 'r' is 'DREAR'.
'and' acts as a link.
(Other definitions for drear that I've seen before include "Morose" , "Dull and tedious" , "Poetic dull and uninteresting" , "miserable" , "Grim" .)