From Sunrise to Sunset. A Long, Hot Day.

Thursday 26th July 2018 in Bath.
Today we planned to go up the River Avon to Bath. There are very few mooring places on this Avon and M has to go home for a night from Bath Spa Station tomorrow morning, so we decided to do the trip from Bristol to Bath in one day. As it is a long trip, we left our mooring at 6:00am, sailing in towards the rising sun.

We waved goodbye to the SS Great Britain as we passed; she  looked majestic and beautiful in the early sunlight. It was a beautiful still morning with hardly a ripple on the water.

Bristol Floating Harbour is connected to the River Avon by a mile long feeder canal and, at the end, is Netham Lock. We had checked with the Harbour office and been assured that the lock keeper would arrive at 6:50. However, no one was there when we arrived and the lock was locked. Eventually at 7:30, someone (not the keeper) turned up and opened the gates so that we could go on to the river.

About four miles up river, we left the auspices of Bristol Harbour and entered into C&RT territory through Lock No. 1 of the Kennet & Avon Canal (although it is still river until Bath locks). Only 107 locks until we reach the Thames! ("Piece of cake!" said M!).

The river flows through a wooded gorge for much of the way and is very attractive, if a bit isolated.

At this lock, two groups of young Sea Scouts were passing through the lock doing their D of E. They had started in Bristol the day before, camped overnight and were heading for Bath. They all looked a trifle anxious and did not seem to be enjoying the experience very much.

At this lock, a group of C&RT chaps were painting the beams and they kindly closed the wet painted gates behind us.

The locks on the river are very wide and long, which makes the gates very heavy. They took an age to empty or fill, which slowed us down a lot.

Finally, we arrived at Bath Bottom Lock in the centre of the city but found a queue  ahead of us as there was a problem with one of the gates in the flight of six locks up to the canal. We had to wait for the C&RT people to fix the gate and then for the pair of boats in front of us to go up the flight before we could start.

After a wait of nearly an hour, we went through the first bottom lock and then into "Deep" Lock. This lock is 19 ft 5in deep and is the second deepest lock on the canal system (Tuel Lock on the Rochdale Canal is 3 inches deeper). The bottom gates are huge!

They are so large that there is a winding mechanism to open and close them using a windlass; it was a very slow process. At this point, M started going ahead on her own to "set" each of the succeeding locks to save time.

From above, the boats look to be down a very deep hole. Luckily, we were sharing the lock and had enough people for R not to have to climb up the ladders to help.

Our companions through the six locks on a hire boat were from Germany. For some of them it was their fifth trip to England to hire a narrowboat.
Finally, we reached the top lock just on 4:00pm, ten hours since we started. 
Bath is notoriously difficult for moorings due solely to its popularity. We were very fortunate to find a space just above the top lock but it was a few feet too short. However, due to the kindness of "Laura" on nb Dreamer, who moved her boat that few feet, we were able to squeeze in behind her, for which we were very grateful.   A lovely shady mooring after a very long, very hot day.

We both went to bed early but not before we had watched the sun set on the distant horizon. From sunrise to sunset, a long day!

Today: 17 miles, 13 locks and 8.8 hours (engine time).
Trip:  176 miles, 78 locks and 97.6 hours