Sorry it's been a while but the Kennet and Avon is a wild canal, not in a dangerous sense but in a back to nature unkempt way.
We haven't passed through many big towns, just small villages and therefore mobile phone signals have been weak or non existent for blogging.
The last big place we passed was Newbury.
This used to be, two hundred years ago, as far as you could navigate. So to this day there is no tow path under Newbury bridge.
It's been hard going too. We've been stopped in our tracks by a broken swing bridge, a tree across the canal and yesterday a closed lock. Fortunately this was at Crofton, home of the worlds oldest steam engine still performing it's original task. So we went and had a look around. They should say " occasionally " performing. Only fires up once in a blue moon.
Even when the locks are open they seem to take an eternity to fill up. The winding gear stiff and awkward to operate and the gates heavy and unyielding. They seem to have been borrowed from any number of other canals. After all this you don't even get a good nights sleep because the railway line is only ever six feet away and it's not a sleepy branch line either, express trains and huge freight trains thunder by every five minutes.
We made it to the summit pound, through Bruce tunnel
and dropped down the other side into a blissful 15 miles of lock free cruising through the land of the large white horse.
It's also crop circle country and we stopped at the Barge inn, an international crop circle centre. With maps showing all crop circle locations, full of hippie drop out types drinking cider. Any connection ????????????
Apart from being a wild canal it's also a very heavily defended one too. There are many pill boxes and tank traps along it's length obviously from the war, but why so many ? they are every half mile or so.
We arrived in Devizes today and had a look around the K&A trusts museum. They had a section dedicated to the war. The Kennet and Avon was designated as a stop line, if the Germans had made it across and we failed to hold them on the beaches. It was known as the blue line. There were 170 pill boxes along it's length of which 130 still exist. The K&A would have become the next front line.
Tomorrow we descend the Caen hill flight 16 closely packed locks with another 13 either side. A total of 29 locks in a little over two miles. Big breakfast will be needed.
PS, Mr B don't be late!
