While moored up in Devizes, we saw our “old friend” John Pinkerton (last seen looking a bit abandoned in Savernake forest) heading down to the winding hole with a few youngsters who were the new owners, and then back up towards the summit; saw it again moored up a day or so later. Wonder what they’re going to use it for: The K&A Trust have pretty well sown up the trip boat market down here. If they’d acquired it for business purposes, it’s a clearly long time coming to fruition, and it’s not an obvious boat to use for pleasure/cruising.

Heading into the Vale of Pewsey, the villages are [a] small; [b] rather remote from the canal; [c] have odd names like Cuckoo’s Knob, Ram Alley and All Cannings (a lie because there’s Bishop’s Cannings next to it; and [d] don’t have shops that sell basic provisions, let alone freshly baked croissants and newspapers – Biggles does like a freshly baked newspaper. Meandering between the chalk hills of the Marlborough downs and Ridgeway to the north and Salisbury plain to the south, one canal guide suggests that this is England’s nearest thing to La France Profonde but I rather suspect the Upper Thames from Eynsham to Lechlade comes closer. Mind you, the long lock-free pound comes as a welcome change.

We’d stopped at The Barge at Honeystreet Wharf on the way to Bath, but it was a hot and beautifully sunny Sunday lunchtime, we had a visitor, and the place was unsurprisingly mobbed and in the general melee nothing seemed obviously out of the ordinary. Just another canal-side pub in the middle of nowhere, with a camp site out the back serving food all day to the masses, On a quiet Monday evening, it became obvious that although pretty quiet, there was a higher than usual proportion of “unusual people”  and boats around.

For example: inside the pub, sitting next to a stack of instruments for anyone to pick up and play, a smartly dressed woman of a certain age (as they say)  was sitting on the sofa with a slightly younger middle-aged gentleman in T-shirt and scruffy shorts. She couldn’t keep her eyes, hands or lips off him, behaving like a teenager in lurve used to when we were young, while a beautiful seal-point Siamese sat on the sofa armrest staring them out, and we could have sworn the large photograph of Jimi Hendrix (sitting at a drum kit!) immediately behind them was growing a  speech bubble that said “get a room”. Even the Siamese got bored with watching after a while, and stalked outside onto a boat that an old lady was painting with primer in the dark.

Then you see that Honeystreet is twinned with Roswell, the lethal scrumpy is called Area 51, the local real ale is called Croppie, and you realise that you have accidentally stumbled into “The Most Famous Pub in the Universe” – Galactic HQ of crop circle enthusiasts.

The Barge Inn, Honeystreet Wharf

And then a few more locks uphill soon brought us to Crofton Top Lock, the end of the all-too-short summit pound. It’ll be downhill all the way to Reading from now on – and you can take that any way you want…

In order not to exceed the allotted 48 hours on the mooring at Bath, and it being a beautiful late afternoon, we started the long trek back towards the Thames after tea, turning round in the Sydney Street winding hole, before having a short but pleasant meander and mooring at Bathampton for the night.

Setting off the next day past  Dundas aqueduct and approaching Avoncliff aqueduct, running parallel to the railway, we heard a steam engine hauled train heading up the valley, and Fran was most disappointed not to see it.

Managing to get moored at Avoncliff, the pub was as quaint as advertised, and the views from the aqueduct splendid. It would have been rude not to have a Guinness before continuing our potter east-wards.

And although it wasn’t a steam train, we did see an ordinary one stopping at the miniscule Avoncliff station.

Passing through Bradford-on-Avon it was much quieter than it was on the previous weekend, and with no particular reason to stop, we parked up in the middle of nowhere but fairly close to the railway, on the outskirts of Hilperton cum Trowbridge.

Whereupon, with that lonesome whistle calling again, Fran grabbed the binoculars and rushed out, to return a few minutes later proclaiming proudly that “it was 35028”, which as any train-spotter worth her salt will know is the Merchant Navy class Clan Line. Must have seen it many times in my boyhood while waiting for trains to/from school at various stations on the Waterloo main line, or standing on the foot-bridges  between Raynes Park and Wimbledon after school, getting steamy and sooty. Wonder where my old Ian Allan book of numbers went…

Having found such amenable moorings, it wasn’t hard to stay in Bath for a couple of days. Too many words and too many photos from other people to worry about putting anything in here, so just a few random pictures of some things that caught our eye.

Bath Abbey and its magnificent fan vaulting.

The band of Angels (all playing a different instrument) over the choir in Bath Abbey, and Fran ignoring Rachmaninov’s piano in the Holbourne Art Museum (which also did damn fine coffee).

Sally Lunn’s house – the oldest house in Bath, apparently, and the home of the Bath Bun. We couldn’t get in for foreign tourists, so retired to the cafe on Pulteney Bridge.

Splendid old-fashioned turnstiles on the entrance to the Croquet Club.

Some nice old fashioned shops too, of which Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights is quite the nicest bookshop I’ve come across, with the possible exception of the delightful (but much smaller) Ceilidh Place in Ullapool, which is the only one I can think of with rooms. And just down the road from Mr B’s, a guitar shop with rare second hand guitars, including a Martin at some £25K! Think I’ll stick to my Thornborys.

There are actually visitor moorings right under the weir at Pulteney Bridge, but for some reason CaRT had “temporarily”  closed them, so we opted not to lock down through another half-dozen or so just to turn round on the Avon and head back. Would have been a nice trip, but Shanks’ pony won out this time.

The canal tunnels under the old K&A Canal HQ. There’s a small hole in the tunnel roof leading up into the building, which was used for passing paperwork up and down (and money up, no doubt).

Sydney Street Wharf, with at least one stealth Anglo Welsh hire boat without any markings. Suppose that’s better than mis-spelling the boat’s name!

End of the canal, at the bottom of Bath Locks, where it joins the River Avon. The river had calmed down after Thursday’s storm, but we decided to stick with the decision to turn around here rather than head for Bristol. A decision stuck to… another rarity!

Although we’d arrived in Bath quite late on a Sunday afternoon, is was such a lovely evening that we thought a quick recce downtown before dinner would be in order: the low sun on the honey coloured sandstone really gives the whole place a warm glow.

The canal running along the back of Sydney Gardens was a peaceful haven; the large building over the tunnel was the HQ of the K&A canal in the early days.

The walk down Great Pulteney Street to the iconic Pulteney Bridge was notable for being almost entirely traffic free, even if the parked cars detracted from the ambience a little.

But what does one make of a narrow three-story pub on the edge of the bridge and backing onto the river which is called The Boater.

A hat for a pub sign; you can have pretty well any flavour of crisps, but they don’t sell plain ones; they don’t sell Guinness and they’d run out of their Guinness substitute/clone; and they were trying to to confuse the German towel leavers by holding their Oktoberfest in September but hiding the advert around the back. Hmmm…

The cumulonimbus clouds building over Devizes might have been a false alarm, the ones seen when we’d moored up for the night in Semington certainly weren’t. Quite the longest, loudest and most torrential thunderstorm we’ve ever experienced: we were quite glad to be in a steel box floating on water. Knocked the internet connection for six, that’s for certain!

The grills in the boat’s ceiling below the obligatory mushroom vents were leaking water into the boat like no tomorrow. Discovered subsequently the mushrooms had two positions: screwed up (max ventilation) and screwed down (more or less watertight). Ours had all been left up: another lesson learned. And one ceiling grille didn’t leak at all: on investigation there’s no mushroom vent above it– it’s just screwed to the ceiling for no immediately obvious reason. Another question for Piper Boats!

Arriving in Bradford on Avon (hyphens optional) you can see why it’s a proper-job Cotswolds tourist trap, even if they do bill it as a mini-Bath. Plenty of pictures on the web, but a few places that caught our eye…

A truly wonderful Tithe Barn.

Some lovely back streets.

The delightful Church of St. Laurence – an ancient Saxon church probably built in the 12th century.

A super little railway station straight out of Miss Marple.

Sunday afternoon bedlam at Bradford Wharf: a deep lock with decent moorings above and below, a winding hole, a busy hire base, a big wide-beam trip boat, pub moorings, water, sewage and rubbish service point and the Friday and Saturday hirers from Hilperton, Caen Hill and Bath all passing through make for occasional chaos and boats everywhere. A good spot for gongoozling as well as mooring for a couple of days!  And a small, friendly and splendid Indian Restaurant within 50 yards. Who could ask for more?