Crick's in Sight

Yes, I know, it’s been some time since the last blog, but that’s the way it goes.  Blogging’s not my thing but it’s one way of keeping in touch and letting everyone know that all’s well.

As you can see from the previous blog we were on the K&A,  well we’ve moved on some since then.  We left the mooring shown in the pic and headed straight for the Thames, turned north, moored for the night in Reading before proceeding to Abingdon, where we stayed for a couple of days before heading for Oxford.

We decided to use Duke’s Cut to leave the Thames for the Oxford Canal.  This was the first time we had used this route and was fine until we arrived at Duke’s Cut lock and found that the exit gate would not open fully due to trapped branches etc, between the open gate and the lock wall.  Took some time to clear before we could move on.

  

Safely through we chugged to Thrupp.  By now the weather had changed for the better and the forecast was great.  Thrupp has some excellent moorings and we were lucky to find one that allowed a 7 day stay, and only 100 yds from the well known Boat Inn.  We stayed 4 days; had two excellent walks of around eight miles each, visiting Woodstock close to Blenhiem Palace and discovering the village of Hampton Gay, which though very small, has a really interesting history.

 We are presently moored about a mile south of Cropredy famous for the Battle of Cropredy (1644) and an annual folk festival hosted by Fairport Convention, due to happen in a week or so.

 Tomorrow we are heading for bridge 124, close to Priors Hardwick and the Butcher’s Arms, where we plan to have lunch on Friday. If you read the blog about our trip with Jayne, Carl, Oliver and Tash you will know about our previous visit to this eating place.

 That’s it for now.  Hope to make Braunston for the weekend and meet the engineer on Monday, to try and fix the water pump system.  Yes you’re right, still isn’t working properly.

Rained Off

We managed to find a decent mooring last night in the middle of nowhere, on the River Kennet.

 River Kennet mooring

It's day three of the Open and it's raining hard - so the obvious thing is not to move on, but stay, moored up, watch the tv and hope it's a little drier tomorrow. 

Burghfield Mill is three quarters of a mile down stream of our mooring, with the outskirts of Reading just out of sight. When we move on tomorrow we've 5 miles to go before joining the Thames. We expect tomorrow to be a long day, to include a Tesco stop plus watering up etc.  Five locks will takes us through Reading and onto the Thames, then heading north through Pangbourne, Goring and with some luck finding a mooring at Wallingford. Unfortunately it seems as though it's due to rain for most of the day, and to be honest it can be pretty miserable when that happens.

Took the following pic when moored at Kintbury - boating as it used to be.

That's it for now - must get back to the Open.

Kintbury

Presently moored just west of Newbury at Kintbury.  Had lunch at the Dundas Arms, which overlooks Kintbury lock, followed by a stroll round the village.  People we’ve met seem to rate the DA but we found it an ordinary pub with a very overpriced menu.

The last blog saw us at Seend Cleeve; since then we have travelled back up the Caen flight, past Devizes, through the Vale of Pewsey, stayed for two days in Hungerford, before arriving at Kintbury this morning.

The Vale of Pewsey is probably one of the most scenic parts of the whole trip.  Rolling chalk hills, two white horses, medieval hill forts and plenty of rights of way.  We had planned to spend days here walking and enjoying the countryside, but due to the shortcomings of the K&A moorings our plans never materialised. 

The K&A has fundamental problems in two areas directly affecting visitors such as ourselves.  Firstly there is a lack of visitor’s moorings over very long stretches of the canal and secondly there’s a large number of so called ‘casual cruisers’ that do not abide by the rules, and are obviously not casual cruisers at all.  Where there are visitor’s mooring it is not uncommon to find them in use by these so-called casual cruisers, who also seem to want to take over the whole towpath at the same time.  As a result many areas that visitors would like to stop at are unsightly, and are positively discouraged from stopping.  Everyone we have talked to complains about the issue, and in the majority of cases are quite adamant, that they will never return to the K&A.

Hungerford was an enjoyable stop.  A small town straddling the canal, full of antique shops.. Having complained in the above paragraph, we were lucky to find a good mooring and to cap it off it was warm and dry.

Hungerford canal side.

Tomorrow we pass Newbury, hoping to moor close to Thatcham, and move onto the Thames the day after.

Turn round at Bristol

Well, it’s now just over a week since our last blog and in that time we have chugged to down the River Avon to Bristol, back to Bath and are now moored at Seend Cleeve.  A walk had been planned  from SC followed by the climb back up the Caen flight, but the weather has turned for the worse so we intend to stay here for a day or two.

We left the last blog heading for the Dundas Aqueduct and travelling onto Bath, which we had decided to pass by and visit on the return trip.  Once at Bath you leave the Kennet & Avon Canal and move onto the River Avon.  This changes the feel of the journey completely as the Avon is much wider, has cleaner water flow, as rivers tend to have as they are somewhat deeper and free flowing, lovely scenery and locks that are at least 2 feet wider than doubles on canals.  We took 2 days for the journey, though most people tend to complete the journey in a full day primarily as there is a lack of decent moorings.

We stayed for 2 nights in Bristol.  There is a mooring charge, based on the length of stay and the size of your boat.  Ours was £39.  We felt it’s certainly worth visiting the floating harbour (the term given to Bristol harbour), which was a commercially working harbour until the 1970s.  One thing worth mentioning, on the return run down the Avon, close to Keynsham lock, we were lucky enough to see an Osprey perched on a branch by the river, obviously fishing.

Pics of Bristol Harbour:

We thoroughly enjoyed Bristol before moving back down the Avon to Bath.  We had visited Bath many years ago but still spent a day, in the sun, strolling the alley ways; I (Ken), enjoying an all day full English, we followed that by a drink in Bath’s smallest pub, later cream teas in the Parade Gardens whilst listening to the Chippenham brass band, and then a jug of Pimm’s as we watched the tourist (mainly Japanese) do their thing. 

Pulteney Bridge, Bath

We left Bath on the 4^th July worried about a change of weather for the worse and a planned close of the Caen flight to repair lock 29.  We’d also heard that diesel at Hilperton was the cheapest on the K&A and planned a stop.  What a stop.  We mentioned to the engineer of a problem with our water pump, yes you’re right it still hasn’t been fixed properly, when it was discovered that we had serious problems with our batteries.  I won’t bore you with the details only to say we left two hours later over £500 the poorer.

Seen in a cemetary in Bath:

Sat at Seend Cleeve and it’s raining.