Sells Green to Bradford on Avon and a cut on the cut!

It was beginning to feel like the loaves and fishes story with regards to feeding four people on a boat for two with supplies running low - we needed to find a supermarket before tea time!  I managed to scrape together a fairly decent breakfast and lunch, but Sainsbury's in Bradford-on-Avon was our destination on Tuesday.

As I've said before, we're finding the Kennet and Avon to be a stunning canal, with an abundance of wildlife and rural views.  We've noticed that the locks are definitely better since we left Devizes, apparently due to the fact that there's more hire boaters around from here to Bristol.

Not long after we started our journey, we came across this beautiful old working boat along with it's crew who'd owned her for thirty years - the boatman's cabin was still how it would've been in the old days, though they've converted the working part of the boat into living accommodation.  They very kindly let us take a look inside and we gawped like good gongoozlers at the marvel of it.  Thank you so much, what a fabulous boat, they're in the process of selling it and I'm sure it will break their hearts to part with it ...

 

A beautiful boat - thank you all

Continuing on from lock 19 to 18, we passed 'The Barge Inn' where we were planning to stop last night before the boys got distracted by the first pub to come into view - shame, it looked like a most charming establishment - maybe we'll go on the way back!  We'll have to write a list of the things we keep saying that about as I suspect we'll forget when it comes to it!

  The Barge Inn - once the home of The Wiltshire Giant - Fred Kempster, 8ft 2ins

We managed to time a couple of swing bridges well with other boaters doing the work

The aqueduct over the very busy A350 by Semington

Dickie looks delighted to be on his 'Busman's Holiday'

Buckley's Lock and cottage - the entrance to the derelict Wilts and Berks Canal is just after the lock and before the bridge

We stopped for diesel, gas and three pumpout cards (which we duly left as we were never given them - will collect on the return journey - more to add to the list!) at 'The Boatyard' at Hilperton Marsh, where Dickie & Sandra had a little peep through the windows of this new narrowboat. It may have got them thinking about a future purchase of their own?

 

Not far from Bradford we were passing a widebeam when I noticed the signs stating that it was a Hairdressing boat, 'The Floating Salon'.  I shouted to Barry to moor up and check it out as he'd needed his hair cut for a while.  He and Dickie both took the opportunity, and seeing the set-up thought I may as well get mine trimmed too!

 

Another successful couple of businesses on the waterways

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An impromptu but welcome stop for haircuts for Dickie, Barry and Sandra

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sandra with her new crop

 

 

 

 

 

We got a mooring along an overgrown bank in Bradford, up the road from the supermarket.  As Sandra and I took a short stroll we came across the most amazing sight and I called back to Barry to grab his camera and come and see as the poor blokes had got their boat stuck across the canal. 

This strange craft is a rescue craft from oil rig disasters - one of the kids had bought it to do up but British Waterways have given them notice to move on

A quick trip around Sainsbury's and the cupboards were stocked up again, with chicken curry on tonight's menu courtesy of Lloyd Grossman along with a few onion Bhajis!

No pubs involved in the nights festivities, just good company and lots of laughs and liquor.  I left them all to it once again and went to bed just after midnight - I'm hopeless without my 8 hours sleep, though why I bothered I don't know as you can't exactly shut the door and keep the noise out on our boat!

 

 

 

Dickie and Barry enjoying themselves with a spot of home brew

 

 

 

Lots of delightful flowers in this garden

Dickie and Sandra arrive at the Caen Hill Flight - awesome!

Before leaving Devizes, Barry had a look around the Kennet & Avon Trust Museum at Devizes Wharf, but we didn't venture any further into the town.  We had a phone call from Dickie and Sandra who were coming by train from Brighton to Bristol, so we worked out that they could get off the train early at Bath, then get a bus to The Black Horse pub at the top of the Caen Hill Flight.

Due to all the dithering about trying to organise our meeting with the new guests, we didn't start out for the locks until after 1400hrs!  The last boat is 'allowed' through Caen Hill by 1700hrs in order to clear the flight by 2000hrs, and there's six locks before we'd even reach the flight!

Minutes before we untied our ropes, the boat behind us left and there was NB No Problem moored up.  They said they'd arrived a while before but didn't see us, otherwise they would've done their shopping in Devizes and shared flight with us - shame :-(  Ah well, we're bound to pass them again on our return journey.

 Lots of hire boats at Devizes Wharf

Sue and Vic move swiftly into our prime mooring spot as we vacated it

Arriving at our first lock of the day, there were two boats about to go down which was fortunate as it's recommended that single boats wait 20 minutes before going through the lock to save water.  Unfortunately we waited in vain and did the rest of the locks on our own.

 The first of the locks of the day - and the first of three lots of boaters to say they'd just read our article - fame at last, lol!

  The Black Horse pub on the left, where Dickie and Sandra will get off their bus from Bath

Approaching our fourth lock, all good so far ...

 The top of the Caen Hill flight - 6 locks down 23 to go!

 

 

 

 

Two almost matching boats coming up after a long day of locking

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

"People live in there"

 

 

 

 

Waiting for a couple of boats to come up before we swap locks

Unsurprisingly there were many gongoozlers along the flight, and we picked up a few people on the way giving some children (and a mum!) a ride down a lock each, which they loved - a great experience for them.

We met up with a few folks today who've read the article in Canal Boat which is cool - it's a bit like blogging I suppose, people say 'hi' and you know that they know so much about you and your life so they feel as though they're meeting up with old friends - but of course we know nothing about them which can be a little disconcerting!  But that's OK, it doesn't take us long to have a bit of a chat.

 

 

A couple of boys we picked up for a ride - they've just returned from 6 years in New Plymouth and are now on their way to live in Quatar 

 

 

 

 

Barry chats away to some of the many gongoozlers along the flight

 

 

 

 

The Caen Hill flight is truly magnificent, especially on a glorious warm and sunny day.  It's definitely one of the highlights of the canals of England, we were so lucky with the weather - what a superb view. 

Each lock has its own large side-pound to conserve water, with an abundance of wildlife and they're extremely well kept. 

It's apparently a deliberate policy of the canal management to allow the fringes of the Kennet and Avon canal to grow to encourage wildlife and plants to flourish, cutting back specified lengths each year.  You can notice the overgrowth all along it's length, and once you know the reason for it it becomes most attractive - though at times we've found it a bit frustrating for mooring up.

 Carefully steering into a lock while being photographed by a young boy

Dickie and Sandra caught us up at lock 40 and were thrown straight into a hard afternoon's graft, no messing!  After stopping for five minutes in a lock for a cup of tea (there weren't any other boats around, honest!) to impart a few basic boat health and safety rules, and instructions on how to use the loo (vital!), we were away. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Straight into the lock-working - and Sandra (W) hands over the reins to Able Seaman Dickie after a welcome cup of tea 

 Dickie soon cracked the skill of steering into locks - a great chance to practice on this flight!

 

 

 

 

Old friends looking terribly pleased to be back together - oh dear, a few days of frivolity to come ...

 

 

 

  Dickie has a pensive moment alone in the lock

 At the bottom of the 16 lock Caen Hill flight - marvellous!  A joy to go through and we get to go back again in a couple of weeks time on the ascent! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not finished yet though, another seven locks before the day's end!

 

 

 

The final straight - approaching lock 22, our 29th lock of the day, having only covered a distance of just over 2 miles in about five hours - incredible!

Nineteen locks later Barry saw a pub advertised and decided enough was enough, so we stopped a short walk away from The Three Magpies, at Sells Green, and went for dinner and drinks.  As we were mooring up, a couple on the towpath from the boat behind us said "Are you the people from the article?  We've just read it" - how lovely!

It was a jolly night; Barry and Dickie go back to the early 1980's when Dickie came to Gisborne for a couple of days and stayed for a year, living with Barry and some of his mates.  They'd caught up last year in Brighton and again earlier this year when they both came to NZ.

Back on the boat and we were presented with a few gifts - two new tops from the boat that Dickie had been working on recently as an 'Able Seaman', two crystal glasses from the boat too, and a copy of a book of his dad's poetry - bless you both.  Now we not only have matching caps from Trish in NZ, we also have matching sweatshirts.  Sadly Dickie took a photo on his camera but we didn't retrieve it before they left :-(.   Probably a good job really!

 Barry and Dickie returning to the boat after a few pints, giggling like a couple of naughty schoolboys! 

Such a happy sun shiny day - must be yellow daisies of some sort?

Pewsey to Devizes and the succession of vivacious visitors begins ...

Jenny and John were arriving in Devizes around 1030hrs on Sunday morning, swapping cars then heading to us in Pewsey, so we needed to be up and about fairly early despite the late night and Barry's bit of a hangover!  All went to plan and we moved along to Pewsey Wharf to fill up with water, arriving just as Jenny and John got to the great pay and display car park there.  We also bumped into Debs and Pete from NB Lorna Doone, and said a quick farewell for now - only realising later that Barry had lent Pete a windlass on Saturday and not got it back - damn!  We have (had!) two short handled ones and one long handled which isn't easy to use at most of the locks.  Hopefully we'll pass them at some stage on our return journey and retrieve it :-(

The rather grand 'Lady's Bridge', built around 1808 by Rennie to appease Lady Susannah Wroughton, who opposed the building of the canal through her land

' Pickled Hill' - just after Lady's Bridge

Within no time at all John was driving like an expert, while Jenny and Sandra took the chance to catch up on event's since we'd last met, chatting and chilling at the pointy end.

 

John took to steering like a duck to water

 

 

 

 

Sandra and Jenny join John at the stern, passing Woodborough Hill on the way to Honeystreet

Just before our chosen lunch stop at Honeystreet, we spotted the wonderful chalk Alton Barnes White Horse on the hill:

"In 1812 Mr Pile paid twenty pounds to a journeyman painter, John Thorne, also known as Jack the Painter, to design the white horse and have the work of cutting it carried out. Thorne designed the horse, then sub-contracted the excavation work to a John Harvey of Stanton St Bernard. Before the work was finished Thorne took off with the money, and Mr Pile was left to pay out again. Thorne was eventually hanged, but what crime that was for seems not to be recorded."

Wiltshire is the county for white horses, having thirteen within the boundary - there's at least twenty-four around Britain. Most of the white horses are chalk hill carvings, and the chalk downs of central Wiltshire make it an ideal place for such figures.  No-one really knows why they were made, most of them having been completed in the last 300 hundred or so years, though one in a place called Uffington is of certain prehistoric origin, being some three thousand years old.

They are certainly magnificent to see from a distance, and are generally maintained by local people.

The magnificent Alton Barnes White Horse

  Standing majestically behind Alton Barnes

Approaching Honeystreet with great expectations ...

The Nicholson's Guide suggests that Honeystreet is:

"A traditional canalside village, complete with sawmills, incorporating some new development and, arguably, one of the most attractively landscaped and charming on the waterways."

Well we must've missed something somewhere, pleasant as it was, it definitely would never have met the above description from what we saw of it - bizarre!  Did they actually stop there when they wrote that I wonder?  It's an OK place, but not a patch on many canalside villages we've encountered.  The Barge Inn looked lovely, but that was about as impressive as it got, despite our walk across the bridge to the main part of the village.  From reading NB No Problem's blog for Saturday, they certainly didn't have a problem at the said establishment on Saturday night!

The Barge Inn, Honeystreet 

Leaving Honeystreet onwards to Devizes, we passed a place called Bishops Canning which, according to our AA Book of British Villages, has an interesting past.  Apparently, one moonlit night probably in the 16th century, a patrol of Excisemen came across two Bishops Canning villagers raking the surface of a local pond.  When he asked them what they were doing they pointed to the reflection of the full moon on the water and replied that they were trying to fish out "thik yaller cheese".  The Excisemen thought they must be idiots and rode away laughing at them - they were actually hooking out illicit kegs of liqour that had been hidden in the pond.  It's said that all Wiltshire men are known as 'Moonrakers', and there's a hire boat company of the same name with many boats on the Kennet and Avon.

Possibly another place to stop on our return journey if we have time ...

Moonrakers fishing out the cheese from the pond

A short while later, travelling along, I spotted No Problem and we slowed to a stop shouting 'Is there anyone home' - Sue immediately appeared from the stern and gave us both a friendly hug saying she'd been expecting us!  We chatted for a while but weren't going to stay too long, until we heard the engine make a strange noise and knew we'd got something wrapped around the prop - there'd been a large, thick, plastic bag floating by which had mysteriously disappeared so was the likely culprit. So we had no choice but to tie up to alongside No Problem, while I put the kettle on and made us all a cup of tea.  As luck would have it, Sue also had some cake so we shared that - delicious thank you!  Good to meet you both at last.

 

 

 

 

Sue from NB No Problem

 

 

 

 

As we were standing chatting, an astonishing sight passed us by and I'm sorry, whoever you are, but I seriously couldn't resist taking a shot - well you must be fair game if you 'dress' like this while steering a narrowboat along a public canal - hilarious!

 Possibly the 'cheekiest photo of the year' - maybe he's just ready to go for a swim at any moment, just in case of emergencies?

Sue and Vic - been living aboard for 8 years and blogging for 6 years - fantastic!

Saying goodbye to Sue and Vic, we continued our journey, coming across some extremely narrow and weedy canal.  Widebeam boats must find this section more challenging than most - you'd certainly find it difficult to pass another boat in one along this stretch.

Just sufficient room for a narrowboat really!

We're loving the Kennet and Avon, there's so much variety of waterway, accompanying landscape and urban developments, as well as boats and people ...

Chilling at the side of the canal on a sunny day

  A happy family staying in a caravan nearby, are delighted to open the swingbridge for us at Bishops Cannings

Masses of liveaboards along this canal who we're 'reliably' informed state on their 'BW License Application' that they're 'continuously cruising', but actually only ever move a few hundred yards!  A very cheap way to live in this glorious part of the country

Guess what business this narrowboat has to market?!

We arrived at our destination a little later than expected, and had a bit of a bite to eat before Jenny and John returned to their car and drove back to Devizes, which almost brought to a close a smashing day of scenery and camaraderie.  It was so good to catch up again, we count ourselves incredibly lucky to have so many good friends.

A little later, we noticed a family of swans and cygnets emerging from the canal and waddling up the slipway next to where we had moored up.  Barry asked me to get his camera to get a shot of him getting up close and personal at the top of the launching ramp.  We're not really sure why people have been so brainwashed into believing that swans are such dangerous creatures, sure they'll give a bit of a bark and a hiss, but we've never encountered any real hostility so long as we've treated them with respect ...

Staggering isn't it?  Such stylish birds, not so scary at all, awesome

A variety of ducks swimming around

Our plan is to complete the Caen Hill flight on Monday, sadly No Problem aren't doing it until Tuesday otherwise we would've shared with them, but we need to get through it before our next guests, Sandra and Dickie, arrive on Monday afternoon - well that was the plan ...

 The end of another bright and beautiful day