Well, I’m back, briefly, as we’ll be back in the land of limited connections again tomorrow; it’ll be Friday before we’re back at Hungerford and reliable signals. We’ve made it to Pewsey, and have decided to turn back here, since all reports on the towpath are of merry chaos at Devizes, where folk are waiting for the Caen Hill flight to reopen on Saturday.
We had a great time with Elanor last weekend, and met her new dog, a Doberman cross bitch called Tia, though the one thing Elanor doesn’t love about her is the name, and may well change it once she’s settled down.
As a result of her visit, I’ve got several new toys to play with, including an O2 PAYG dongle (but no signal for it yet) and a new phone from Vodafone on a very good deal. It includes casual data use at 50p for a day, up to 25 Mb, so easily enough to check email, although not much scope for web browsing. This means that I now have three choices for internet access.
We’ve had a good Voda signal up to today; here at Pewsey we can get voice OK, but no data.
One other good thing to report; we had a visit from Rob Buckland of the Wiltshire Fire Service, who checked out the boat and fitted a free smoke alarm. An excellent service, and they’ve had the sense to use an experienced boater, who was a really nice guy to boot.
We won’t be coming back to the K&A. I can quite see why it appeals to some, but those 56, broad, not well maintained locks between here and the Thames are just too much; this pound is beautiful, sure, but we know of lots of others, just as beautiful or even more so, that don’t involve the blood sweat and tears of getting here. Even now we're here, the pleasure is spoilt by the thought of having to slog back.
Good points about the K&A: the scenery, the people, the villages, um...
Bad points: the locks, the lack of places to moor, the railway line alongside for so much of it, the locks, the depth, the grotty state of it, the locks, the smell at Crofton (Wilton Water was covered in thick, rotting algae).
The real problem, as you'll have gathered, is the locks; at more than one per mile between the Thames and Wootton Rivers, there’s simply never a break from them. It’s not just that they are so badly maintained, it’s that so many of them are poorly designed, and some are only just 70 feet long, so that going back down is going to be real fun as well.
Then there’s the water flows across and around and through them, especially between Newbury and Reading. Rennie was a brilliant architect, but rubbish at engineering a canal.
We’ve coped with plenty of heavy lock flights in our time; the Cheshire Locks we quite enjoy, and Hatton and Tardebigge hold no terrors for us, but those are over in one or two days. These just go on, and on, and on.
Don’t let me put you off; if you don’t mind some very hard work, every day for a week, can put up with a railway line within 100 metres at every mooring, and enjoy the challenge of boating a canal that’s been minimally maintained for the twenty years since it reopened, the K&A will suit you down to the ground.
Or, like us, you may need to visit for yourself just to find out what it’s like, but like one of my regular readers, it will be the trip of a lifetime, as you won’t want to come back.
It will be interesting to hear how the new trial management arrangements work out, with the K&A Canal Trust taking an active part; they could certainly do more, in the way that SUCS has on the Shroppie and Llangollen, installing visitor moorings with adequate depth and generally adding amenities to the canal.
That's enough for now; next proper post will probably be on Friday, and in the meantime I’ll use Twitter to add comments to the sidebar on the right.
