FlyTexas wrote:Those canal boats...do people live on them year round, or just on holidays?
Hello Brian. Both. About half of the narrowboats are owned by hire companies who rent them out for holidays and the rest are privately owned. The canals are 'policed' by British Waterways who licence the boats and moorings. There are a limited number of residential moorings, but most are temporary to cater for leisure travellers. Permanent moorings are usually in marinas or on private property. But the 'policing' is pretty relaxed and most residents just move the boat a few miles along every couple of weeks and BW turn a blind eye. There are a few more permanent 'alternative' communities and you have to keep an eye out for free range kids, chickens and other domestic animals wandering about the towpath! They get hassled by BW but seem to get away with it.
There are 2000 miles of navigable canals across the UK and half the population live within 5 miles of one, so they're a popular leisure destination. They are actually a sort of museum of our industrial heritage. They were built in the early 1800s to transport freight so most of them run between city centres and docks, the beautiful countryside was irrelevant in them days!
This is a good site if you want to know more about canals
http://www.canaljunction.com/canal/maps.htm
The Kennet and Avon canal was built to connect the Rivers Avon and Thames so the boats can navigate coast to coast from London to Bristol for carrying freight. The main freight on this canal was cloth from the mills in the weaving towns of Bradford-on-Avon and Trowbridge, and Bath stone from the quarries. The first picture is a stone wharf next to an aqueduct. The stone was brought down from the quarry on a gravity-powered railway and loaded on the barges by the crane which is still there. The wharf in the last pic is in Bradford-on-Avon where the bales of cloth would be loaded to be shipped to London.
The barges were powered by horse - hence the towing path. In the picture of the tunnel you can see the rope marks in the stone caused by the towrope rubbing against the soft Bath stone. This is a feature of many of the bridges around here. It's unusual to have a towpath through a tunnel. Usually the horse would be led around the tunnel and the bargee would lay on his back and propel the barge with his legs! This particular tunnel runs directly under a large house that used to be the offices of the canal company. There's a trapdoor in the middle through which the office staff and the bargees could communicate or pass stuff to each other.
The canals only lasted a few years as the railways made them obsolete and they fell into disrepair. The Kennet and Avon was rebuilt during the last twenty years by volunteers, government money and lottery funding.
The scenery is the Limpley Stoke Valley which is part of the designated 'Cotswold Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty'. I've lived here for the last 25 years because I fell in love with it the moment I saw it and have lived in 6 different houses now - all within a mile of the canal
I'd better stop now or I'll go on all day!
Ian
). On the other hand, I don't need fancy rear view mirrors as not much comes up behind me along here! It's only an 18 mile round trip and I completed it on an ice cream and a cup of tea. But don't forget I'm nearly middle-aged 
I'll probably go up onto Salisbury Plain on Sunday and do something a bit more mountain-bikey 
I suffer from paranoid amnesia. I can't remember who I don't trust.
That is some very lush scenery. Wow! Those canal boats...do people live on them year round, or just on holidays?