Bath to Honey Street

After turning in the winding hole at Bath we returned along the Kennet and Avon to Bradford-on-Avon.  This quirky little town of honey coloured Bath stone is perched on a steep sided valley.  I walked up the narrow streets and through a series of steep passages up the hillside to the hermit chapel of St Mary.

Steep passages led me up the hillside

 The grounds of the little church gave me good views across the town.

The view across the town

Back down the hill I came across the Saxon church of St Lawrence, a narrow but tall building with a simple interior.

The simple interior of St Lawrence

From Bradford-on-Avon we sailed back to Seend Locks and after a couple of nights back to Sells Green.  Ahead of us were 29 locks into Devizes including the 16 locks of the Caen Hill Flight but we had a plan.  On Sunday we went up the first 7 locks and stopped at the bottom of the flight.  At 8pm the locks are closed and drained down for the night.  The next morning when they were opened we would have 16 locks in our favour, we just needed to push the lock gates open.  At 7.50am the lock keeper arrived on his quad bike to unlock the gates and we were straight in.  The only drawback was torrential rain but undeterred we made our way up the 16 locks in 105 minutes which we thought was pretty good going.  A volunteer lock keeper braved the weather to set the remaining 6 locks spread along the route into Devizes.  

On Tuesday we enjoyed a tour of the Wadworth Brewery which was very interesting.  The brewery has retained some traditions and along with the brewing methods we saw the sign writing department where all the signage for their chain of pubs is still painted by hand and pub signs are painted by an artist.  We also saw the shire horses who make the deliveries in Devizes using a dray.   The tour ended with a generous tasting session of 6 ales and a stout after which we staggered back to the boat.

The artist at work on a pub sign

On Thursday we left Devizes sailing on the narrow, shallow section of canal to the Barge Inn at Honey Street.

The narrow section of the canal, luckily we didn't meet anyone coming the other way 

We'd arranged to meet up with Geoff and Chris who sailed with us from Goole in February.  Although this canal is busy we've noticed the hire boaters move on after 10am leaving the visitor moorings free and by arriving mid-morning we were able to moor up near each other.  The Barge Inn made an ideal location to enjoying catching up and we stayed for a couple of days.

The Barge Inn and yes that is Bess staring intently at the door

Our journey from Bath to Honey Street