Five (or Six) Go Mad In Somerset!

Well being the May half term, a couple of us from school decided to brave the Canal boat adventure again - this time the Kennet and Avon canal, which runs from Bristol through Bath and on to Reading, and boasts over 100 locks (we're not going to get to do all of those though!) and the famous Caen Hill locks, one of the "Seven Wonders of the Waterways" - a stretch of some 29 locks with 16 straight in a row!  It's going to be absolutely amazing!

Our intrepid explorers are - Erik (the "Chief Engineer" and general organiser of the whole thing), Q (the "Admiral"), Stella (the "Mutineer" as she will be leaving part-way through), Makeda (the "First Mate"), Michelle (the "Cabin Boy" on account of she has a complex about looking like a boy when she is soaked through from rain doing the locks), and myself (the "Pirate" on account of that was the only badge left!).

We picked up our boat, the Axbridge (from the AngloWelsh Boat Company), from Bath on Saturday afternoon and set off as quick as we could, off to cover as much of the canal as possible.  Unfortunately this canal is one of the more populated ones, and seeing as you can't go very fast at the best of times (and certainly not when going past other boats), we really didn't make much progress on that first day.  We didn't even make it to any of the locks!

But obviously the journey up from London and the bit of boating we did on the first day must've really taken it out of us all, because we slept so late the next day!  We didn't get underway til about midday, and it was raining, so it wasn't really very pleasant, but we stopped off at a lovely pub enroute for Sunday lunch, which was gorgeous.  The sun then came out, we made a bit of mileage, achieved a few locks, and generally felt very good about everything - until we accidentally hit another boat whilst trying to negotiate a narrow bit of the canal.  The woman from that boat came out, yelling and screaming at Makeda, saying "I'm gonna knock your teeth down your throat!".  Suffice to say we hoofed it out of there pretty quick!

Our boat is not the best narrowboat I've been on (listen to me, like a seasoned pro - although I've only been narrowboating twice in my whole life!).  It supposedly sleeps 6 - if 4 people don't mind sharing - and if 2 of those 4 don't mind having to set up their bed every night by folding down the table and all... And the electrics are rubbish.  If you don't rev the engine enough, or just motor slowly throughout the day (and remember you can't actually go fast as there are a lot of boats moored in this canal), then you don't have any electricity later in the evening.  It's pretty ordinary, actually.

Anyway, Monday.  We were up marginally earlier than Sunday and set off in two teams of three as the weather was really bad, raining very heavily (and at times even sleeting).  We accomplished several locks throughout the morning but then the wind came up.  It was blowing us all over the canal!  One bloke we passed advised us to pull up after the next lot of locks, as we were fast approaching the famed Caen Hill flight of locks - and there's just no way you can stop once you start them - they apparently take 5 hours to negotiate!

So we waited out the wind a bit and then decided to press on towards Caen Hill, in the hopes that we might actually make it up there.  At the start of the ascent, we stopped off at the ranger's station - and he told us we didn't have enough time to negotiate all the locks, we would have to moor up overnight at number 29 (some 7 away from the start of the sequence) as he was locking them all up for the night.

Which is exactly what we did.  We moored up, and then had to walk up past the 16 in a row which we would negotiate the next day, on our way to the Black Horse for our evening meal.

Moored up for the evening at Caen Hill locks

The flight of 16 locks at Caen Hill awaits us tomorrow (with another 6 at the top afterwards!)

The next day, Tuesday, the sun came out, we got up early (8am thank you very much) and then with another boat proceeded to make our way up the flight of locks.  I'm very pleased to report that as each lock was 'ours' (meaning that the lock level was at the level we were going in at - as opposed to requiring us to empty or fill the lock before we could go in), it was much quicker and we managed to do the whole thing in just on 2 hours!

We pulled off at Devizes wharf, at the top of the locks, said goodbye to Stella (who was making her way back to London) and headed off to do some shopping!

A much needed lunch break was taken after this - and now, as I write, we're heading off for our turning point - so we can turn around and do it all again - I hope not today though...