Aim was to cycle the Kennet & Avon Canal towpath – 89 miles plus the extra bits either end. Travelled down to Bristol Temple Meads station by train. The usual mix of kind hearted positive spirited travellers on the train, oh and also fine examples of the egotistical traveller of course.

Left Temple Meads and pedalled out from the back of the station heading for the Bristol to Bath cycle path (NCN Route 4). I was surprised to see a number of caravans parked up in side streets in the industrial area near the station. Seemingly part of a community that has sprung up in these austere times.

Bristol truly is a cycling city and the cycling infrastructure is impressive and continues to be so throughout Somerset. Having segregated cycle ways is the future  to getting more people in the saddle as reductions in motorised traffic do not appear to happening any time soon. Bristol & Bath prove this with a much wider variety of people pedalling on their tarmac. I saw more children and women cycling than I have in a long while just going about their usual daily business traffic free. From punks in red sparkling spandex heading down town to mums on route to the school gates (it surprised me that school was not out for summer in the South West yet). I also saw two Police Officers patrolling on bikes, one in Bristol and one in Bath. Both positive sightings in an age where I’ve become used to seeing the Police only behind the windscreens of their patrol cars. The path gently climbs out of Bristol through a leafy cut and includes the Staple Hill Tunnel which was a like a fridge even in a heat wave.

Route 4 runs parallel to the Avon Valley Railway to the River Avon and into Bath.

Once the Canal got underway proper I endeavoured to keep to the towpath and only diverting from the water side when there was no other option.

Canals seek to follow contours where they can and the Kennet & Avon is no different.  Railways are the same. So it’s not surprise that the rails of the Great Western Railway (GWR) are never that far from the Canal for the length of it’s course. Indeed it was the coming of the Railway and the GWR that killed off the profitability of the Canal as an economic industrial going concern as early as 1851.

Bath was Britain’s first tourist resort. An early example of Britain’s service industry – and remains so today.

Bath is where the Kennet & Avon Canal sets off on it’s route eventually to Reading and it’s end where it flows into the River Thames.

Overnight stopover (Monday) was in Trowbridge. First impressions of Trowbridge were faded Georgian grandeur, empty shops, and a variety of odd men wandering the streets who could be overheard engaged in odd conversations. Maybe I arrived at the wrong time in the wrong mindset after the smart Georgian Palladian architecture of Bath but the town looks like it’s been in decline since the disappearance in the 1980’s of the woollen cloth trade where it’s fortunes were originally made. Also if Wetherspoon’s ever read this Trowbridge shattered all you meant to me. Although as Duff McKagan (GNR) might say show a little tenderness as Trowbridge could be a slow burner in terms of it’s renaissance. That’s the town though not the ‘spoons.