KENNET & AVON Summer 2010
We took our usual week's holiday on our 50' narrowboat Panther 2 during July 2010. we use the boat a lot just to relax on and she is kept close by a very beautiful stretch of the K&A near Bradford on Avon. This year we headed towards Bath, not favoring a trip up the Caen Hill flight in the other direction. When we got to the bath top lock we discovered that the flight of locks down into Bath was to be closed that afternoon for 5 days for repair work. We have not been on the Avon to Bristol since we had our previous boat Prologue which was more than 5 years ago, so we decided to go down the flight and on to Bristol.
Because the Bath flight was closed, we had a mooring at Pultney Bridge by the weir almost to ourselves and spent a couple of days there allowing me to paint several of the sketches shown here before moving off along the Avon, through Bath and on to Bristol.
The Avon to Bristol runs through some wonderful rural pastures and wooded areas - there are not many places to tie up easily and so you more or less have to keep going through the 6 locks (larger than the ones on the canal section above Bath) until you get to Hanham lock where you can tie up at some public moorings close by a couple of pubs. Having made the call through to the lock keeper at the lock just before Bristol to make sure that the lock would be open we set off and finally tied up at Baltic Wharf not far from the S.S. Great Britain - mooring in Bristol's Floating Harbour is not cheap so we stayed just the night and headed back the next day after exploring some of Bristol's markets.
We spent a few more evenings tied up at Pultney Bridge and shopping in Bath before heading back home - here are the pages from my sketch book - CLICK ON A THUMBNAIL TO SEE A BIGGER VERSION OF EACH PICTURE.
Oh and to whoever the young couple were who made love noisily on the damp concrete embankment just outside our boat at 2am in the morning at Pultney Bridge (11/12th July), thanks for the entertainment and I hope you were using precautions - you obviously didn't feel the cold!!
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