In which Sid and Doris visit the Somersetshire Coal Canal and have friends to dinner.
Leaving Bath requires turning around, in full view of gongoozlers and experienced narrow boaters. You turn a narrow boat in a winding hole because the wind helps the boat to spin, of course. Or not, if there is no wind.
Sid backs the boat up which is a good start as they do not steer in reverse or that’s what they tell the hirers. Then we put the boat forward into the winding hole and then it sticks on the mud because the hole has not been dredged. Much use of the engine with Doris heaving on the punting pole and we are round. The next boat to turn does the whole thing with two poles, quietly and with no stucking. Well we live and learn.
Feeling much calmer than we were on our approach to Bath, we get the change to admire the engineering beauty of the Sydney Gardens tunnels.
We tootle back the way we came and find a peaceful mooring just before the Dundas Aqueduct which takes the canal over the Avon. There is a wharf and this is where the Coal Canal joins the K&A. in 1800 there were about 80 collieries in Somerset. The route involved a flight of 22 locks, a tunnel, two aqueducts and a tramway. For a while it was profitable.
The canal looks impossibly tiny, but that is why narrowboats are the shape they are.
It is difficult to take a photo from ground or canal level which shows you the aqueduct, so many thanks to British Listed Buildings for providing this one – their website is here. We need a new hashtag – #bestviewedfromabove.
Blog done, and time to welcome our friends Tim and Sarah for a windswept but covid-compliant beer on the front deck.