End of the line

Been to Bath by boat before? Illiteration aside, we definitely recommend it. The canal through Bath is about the nicest urban waterway we've ever used as it descends through six locks down to the River Avon.

The best moorings in Bath, on the river below Poultney Weir, have been suspended by the council so we stayed on the canal and moored at the top of the Widcombe flight. These are nice 48 hour moorings and only minutes from the city centre.

Bath is a beautiful city and we did the usual sight-seeing.

The next day we went down the locks and onto the river, still travelling with nb Quaintrelle.

The penultimate lock is Bath Deep Lock, which at over 19' is the second deepest on the system as two locks were combined into one due to road building. For canal anoraks out there the deepest on the system is Tuel Lane at Sowerby Bridge on the Rochdale Canal, which we did in 2012.

Emerging onto the Avon we headed downstream a little way and found a mooring near Victoria Bridge.... especially for Victoria and complete with hot air balloon ride.....!  (for people in the hot air balloon - not us).

 A temporary closure of the navigation the following day meant we had to get off this part of the river or be locked in for a couple of days. We had known about this for a while but still managed to end up rushing to get off the river at the last minute.

The Avon is a lovely river and we had a scenic cruise downstream to a pontoon mooring near Keynsham.

The pontoon is just after the Bristol-Bath cycleway and, while a little short of space (we were three abreast for a while), it's a lovely spot.

We made use of the nearby benches to have a great BBQ with nb Quaintrelle, whose cooking skills have put us to shame the past couple of weeks! We have just about kept up with the drinking though.... and not ended up like Victoria's brother has done today...... (How's the carpet James?).

Having confirmed timings for the tidal section into Bristol with the lock keeper at Netham lock we made a late start the following day (nothing to do with the wine we had with our BBQ you understand).

As we're into spring tides, the river is tidal from Keynsham lock onwards. Spot the chimney from the old Fry's chocolate factory.

At Hanham we rang the lock keeper to confirm timings and he asked us to wait a bit before leaving as he had to nip out. We had a quick lunch in the lock to pass the time - cheeky but it's so quiet down here we didn't hold anyone up - before carrying on to Bristol.

Compared to previous tidal transits we've made, this was a doddle. The river was barely flowing and we had a nice easy trip to join the feeder canal at Netham Lock, which had both sets of gates open ready for us.

I should stress this is only because we followed the lock keeper's advice on timings - if you don't ring you could be in for a rough ride and find the lock not ready to let you into the harbour.

After handing over more money than we would've liked for our visitor mooring permit (£1 per hour for us!) we followed the feeder canal. This leads through an industrial area to join the main floating harbour at a 90 degree bend (which narrows, as Mike from Quaintrelle now knows...!). From here the journey to the visitor moorings is much more impressive, and reminded us a little of Liverpool docks where we went last year.

The harbour area of Bristol is really varied, from modern offices

To old terraces,

A low swing bridge (Duck, Middlewich! Geddit?...),

and Brunel's SS Great Britain

We moored on the pontoons almost opposite the Great Britain, which is a great spot in the harbour.

We took the bikes for a ride down the Avon gorge, which has a great cycleway along it, under the Clifton suspension bridge and scared ourselves looking at the very large mudbanks and racing tide on this part of the Avon.

We'll save that for another year thanks....

Our second day in Bristol got off to a slow start as we'd been invited for dinner the night before by Quaintrelle and managed to half fill their back deck with empty bottles.... Still, we made it out to watch the Tour of Britain finish in Bristol with our uni friend Will and had a meal out with him and his girlfriend Monica, as well as Mike from Quaintrelle whose wife Aileen had (foolishly??) left him boat sitting on his own.

The next day we sadly said our goodbyes to nb Quaintrelle. We've travelled with them for over a fortnight but they are staying on in Bristol a little longer. We will miss them as we head back east.

This will probably be our final blog for this year. We're heading back along the K&A to find a winter mooring and hopefully we will be able to amuse ourselves for the winter. We've had an amazing six months cruising and are already thinking about next year's plans......

This was the view out of our front doors on our final night in Bristol - a great end to a great trip! We've been to some great places and the weather has just been superb.