7/24 (Friday) – Newbury and the Kennett and Avon Canal

Today was raining and a bit cold.  We hung around the Bacon Arms for a while and then headed out into Newbury to visit a small museum that one of the hotel staff told us about.  The Newbury Museum had artifacts dating to the Greeks and Romans and also some Asian artifacts…these had all been gifts to the museum.  However, most of the objects were related to the area.  They had clothing, information about the canals, and lots of activities for the children.  We all were in agreement that it was a very nice little museum.  We ended up having lunch at a Tex/Mex restaurant.  Food was ok but not the best.

At 3:00 we caught a taxi and headed out to find the Wessex Rose, our home away from home for the next five days. 

We met David and Karen, the boat owners,

and Rosemond and John from southern Britain, our fellow travelers.  After settling into our tiny but lovely staterooms we had a safety briefing and then cast off for the start of our cruise along the Kennett and Avon Canal to Pewsy.  The Wessex Rose travels verrrrry slowly and only verrrry short distances each day. It needs to go through many locks (which eat up the time).  Each morning we left shortly after breakfast, stopped for lunch with enough time for us to explore the local town, and stopped for the day again with enough time to explore the local towns before dinner, so made only 7 - 8 miles a day.  You could have walked the tow path as fast.  But it was very relaxing.  It was the forced idleness that made it so great.  That and the company and the beautiful English countryside.

Karen does most of the captaining of the boat while David deals with the locks.  We discovered that he is also an awesome, self-trained chef and we had a delicious, awesome, world class dinner. 

Awesome dessert - Cheesecake

We didn't go far this first day of cruising but we did go through some locks and saw some lovely countryside.

There were a lot of lovely old bridges along the canals.  According to David, whenever the canal cut through a farm, the canal company was required build a bridge so the farmer could get from one side of his farm to another.