A lovely Monday morning, with all the hire boats and stag-do boats gone – no doubt a few of those will be nursing a few hangovers!

We left about 9am, with a boat just in front of us, yey we thought as we could share the locks.  They then pulled in five mins later to their hire base.

We had six locks through Bath, which run right though the city.  All the locks are well cared for, and Bath seems to embrace the canal, rather than hide it away.  One of the locks is the second deepest on the network at 19ft 5in, (a result of combining two locks when the roads were designed).  It was quite scary, with the biggest lock gates I’ve ever seen.

We left the Kennet and Avon canal, and joined the River Avon, it was quite a contrast as it’s so much bigger than the canals. A few locks, which were like the Thames locks in size, one grumpy yoghurt pot cruiser, but otherwise just lovely narrowboat folk.

Very little moorings on the River Avon, folk just seem to use it as a transit pass between Bath and Bristol. There was space on the floating pontoon, where we decided to moor for the night.

I washed below the gunnels, and all the deck boards, Toby was a bit braver than me and washed the river side of the boat. Toby also did an oil and filter change.