Walking England's Kennet & Avon Canal

My discovery of the Kennet & Avon Canal was a revelation. I’d been confronted with a dilemma, the fact that I loved walking in the English countryside but had come to the conclusion that I could no longer take on the hills comfortably. Bath is the end point of more than 100 miles of the Cotswold Way and I’d completed it in 3 trips.

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The last section left me wondering if my walking days were over, having had some tortuous ascents and descents and finally, with the help of the fabulous OS maps of the UK, had found my way around, rather than the follow the path over, a number of them.

K%26A1 K%26A2 Chalk hills of the Wiltshire Downs, near Pewsey.

Sitting in my favorite attic room at the Edgar Hotel on Great Pulteney Street, I studied the map. Very near where I sat I saw the River Avon on the city side, the Pulteney Bridge over which I’d walked from the official end of the Cotswold Way at the cathedral in one direction, and something called the Kennet & Avon Canal in the other. The next day I set out to discover just what was there.

16th C. Royal Oak Pub in Wootton Rivers, near the canal.

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If I hadn’t been on foot, I might have missed it. Access was down a narrow flight of almost invisible stone steps that descended from the corner of the Tesco Express convenience store. Once down the stairs, the sense that I was in a city receded and I entered a parallel world of water, narrowboats, pretty bridges, locks and the manicured back gardens of large Cotswold stone houses sloping to the water’s edge. I walked south, toward the Bath Spa train station, eventually onto a rougher and distinctly un-manicured part of the path, until I found an escape stair back up to real Bath.

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I wondered, then, what might a walk farther afield along the canal be like and decided to find out. I took the train to Bradford-on-Avon, 5 miles away and also on the canal. I intended to have lunch, then walk back to Bath. And so I did and along the way I was hooked.

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The possibilities for canal walking in England are endless. Built originally as a means to haul freight, and put out of business for that purpose by the railroads, hundreds of miles of canals have been resurrected for the pleasure of cruising in narrowboats. And the advantages of walking along them are greater than just the fact that they’re largely flat, or the rises gentle where locks have been built to raise boats over hills. There are towns and villages all along most of them, places to stop, to eat and stay the night, and people to talk to, if one is inclined. It’s a very different ambiance than on other paths I’d been walking and I liked it very much.

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When I returned to England I headed for Bath again and my comfortable garret, with a view of a playing field, at the Edgar Hotel. I revisited the 5 miles to Bradford, but in the opposite direction, and continuing on, stayed at a canalside former toll-taker’s house, now a B&B. Then I stopped in Devizes after the spectacular climb of the famous flight of locks at Caen Hill, and stayed with a friend in her Elizabethan house. The following spring, after a few days visit, Una dropped me at the Bridge Inn, alongside the canal, and I was off again. The pictures here are from that trip, from Devizes to Hungerford.

Currently planning the final section of my Kennet & Avon walk, from Hungerford to where the canal ends in Reading, I’m so looking forward to it but also sorry. I’ll miss it when it’s done.

K%26A12 Approaching Great Bedwyn. Church of St. Mary the Virgin, begun in AD 1092, over a Saxon church from AD 905.

K%26A13 Thatched cottages on Farm Lane, Great Bedwyn.

K%26A14 K%26A15 Castle Cottage, home for a night. More information at the bottom of the page.

K%26A16 My bed with my favorite hat (still). I see I was reading 'The End of Mr. Y', by Scarlett Thomas, which I recommend.

K%26A17 Leaving Great Bedwyn next day. Castle Cottage to the left of the tall tree.

Approaching Hungerford. K%26A18 K%26A19

K%26A20 My hostess, meeting me on the towpath outside Hungerford.

The following is the description of Castle Cottage from the record of listed historic buildings:

Description: Castle Cottage

Grade: II
Date Listed: 22 August 1966
English Heritage Building ID: 310825
OS Grid Reference: SU2799164748
OS Grid Coordinates: 427991, 164748
Latitude/Longitude: 51.3811, -1.5992
Location: 12 Farm Lane, Great Bedwyn, Wiltshire SN8 3LU
Locality: Great Bedwyn
County: Wiltshire
Country: England
Postcode: SN8 3LU

No 12 Castle Cottage (formerly listed as No 12 The Castle)
Cottage, C16 - C17. Timber framed with brick laced flint elevation. Thatched roof. Single-storey and attic, 2-3 bays gable to road. Framing 3 panels high with colourwashed brick noggings, jowled posts to gable end and clasped purlin roof. Timber frame may be of 2 periods. On right elevation, boarded door within porch, and to left, large C15 stone stack, offset both sides, with moulded string course and creasing for earlier roof. Circular flue. Possibly the remains of the hospital of St John, founded 1279. Further flue added to rear. Irregular windows. Thatch swept over 1 dormer and half-hipped to rear. Sir Thomas Willis, physician of local note, was born here 1620-21.