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some help needed for cruising the Kennot and Avon. Is there a strong current? When does it flood? and more????


lucyboatgirl

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27 minutes ago, lucyboatgirl said:

hey thanks dmr,

I have a few years boating experience but only on the canal and a little experience of the thames (mostly downstream).

But you reckon that the mooring spots in bristol are hard to find? I am aware the canal doesnt go into bristol and am happy to moor up out of town and cycle in. Some folk told me it was possible but do you think i will struggle to find a few spots to hop around over the winter?

 

Thanks for your advice dmr you have been very helpful x

 

You can't really moor in Bristol. You could visit for a month (I estimate £10 per night). If you are lucky they might let you stay an extra month. Trouble is all or almost all spots will be taken by official winter moorings. There is no prospect of finding a quiet discrete corner to hide in. There is a tiny tiny chance of a marina or boatyard spot.

Bath to Bristol is the River Avon. Very few moorings and no place to be in the winter. It floods and can come up really quickly. Long term moorers have proper poles or pontoons to cope with the huge increase in level. There are a couple of marinas on the river where you might get in, but don't set off till you have a place.

Only option is to CC on the canal in the Bradford on Avon to Bath region. Easy train ride to Bristol. Already busy with lots of CC'ing liveaboards and CaRT patrol seriously. However if you can move every two weeks you should just about get by for the winter, any longer and you would need to move over a greater distance. Its a good place with a good community and a lot of stuff going on. Its always busy and gets very busy in Summer with hire boats and visiting boats so if you want to experience "life at the Western End" then winter is a good time to do it. We go down there for a month or two every winter, but have decided to try a Northern winter this year.

.............Dave

if you do visit Bristol and the Avon floods then you will be trapped in Bristol, this might be exactly what you want (as long as you can afford to keep paying) but you may be on a very unsatisfactory mooring and not enjoying it.

Edited by dmr
spellin and more info
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Having taken my boat down to Bristol earlier this year I can only confirm what Dave says. Mooring places on the Avon in the Bristol area are few and far between and mostly already taken up by what look like committed CMers. There appears usually to be space in the (huge) Floating Harbour but the charges are phenomenal for visitors. £80 a week-ish IIRC. A few on-line 'marinas' are dotted here and there but they all look full. Please go there arrange a proper mooring before setting out or you are highly likely to get stranded with nowhere to moor when you get there.

And yes the water levels change drastically with rainfall. It is sobering to cruise down the Avon towards Bristol and see all the plastic bags, coal sacks and general detritus snared up in the tree branches up to 10ft above the current water level, and muse how it all got there.

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yeah, we Bristolians are proud of our heritage and don't want furriners spending more than a couple of days and a few thousand pounds in our fair city.

 

I have cruised from Bristol to Bath a few times and the only overnight stops have been spent roped up to overhanging trees.  There are 2 water points with pontoons, but they must have been pre-booked when I went past because they are usually occupied by an unoccupied boat as far as I could tell :unsure:.  However I believe you can moor just upstream of Bristol Avon Sailing Club on Mead Lane on the south bank upstream of Saltford lock, but I don't know what the charges are.

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8 hours ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

There appears usually to be space in the (huge) Floating Harbour but the charges are phenomenal for visitors. £80 a week-ish IIRC.

Phenomenal - you think ?

Try York marina at around £70 per NIGHT, and, it is so far out of York, it is a taxi ride into town.

Edit-since we were there they are now charging a fixed rate (is was a per-foot rate).

Boats over 30 foot is £27.50 per night - still makes your £80 per week look cheap)

We recently paid around the £25-£30 per night on our trip down the East coast and got no more facilities than an average canal marina.

 

Edited by Alan de Enfield
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On 10/10/2017 at 09:26, Alan de Enfield said:

Phenomenal - you think ?

Try York marina at around £70 per NIGHT, and, it is so far out of York, it is a taxi ride into town.

Edit-since we were there they are now charging a fixed rate (is was a per-foot rate).

Boats over 30 foot is £27.50 per night - still makes your £80 per week look cheap)

We recently paid around the £25-£30 per night on our trip down the East coast and got no more facilities than an average canal marina.

 

 

Lets hope the OP reads this before setting out!

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15 hours ago, lucyboatgirl said:

hey thanks you lot. loads of very helpful and conflicting advice! Thanks for really valuable info davidsscheizer! Mega helpful but then a bit contradicted in terms of the strength of the flow by blackrose and dmr. Dmr i think you might have actually talked me out of it completely by talking about how strong the current can be. And yes i did totally get the stoppages wrong ha ha! just using internet in the pub and trying to type too quickly and get all my internet done before i had to leave.

I would really love to do this trip but i think i might have just left it too late before the stoppages and then if i hit any problems i would be stranded for months. I think i'm changing my mind.

Thank you so much to you all for taking the time to answer this question you are so helpful and truly appreciated.

I do find it a bit weird that because I have not been on line for a few days that there became such a chat about my profile and calling my character into question. I use this website very sincerely and if my question comes across as ignorant then maybe that's because it is, thus why I am seeking out some information and knowledge about the subject. I took so long to reply because I was researching all the info given to me and looking at maps as it is not a part of the world i know anything about. I am sorry if you felt like you had taken the time to answer my question and that I was being unappreciative. This is totally not the case and I genuinely am thankful for you taking the time to answer and I think you are all helping folks out and sharing your knowledge and i think it is brilliant.

Stay positive and strong together out there my boating brothers and sisters x x x x x x

Mooring in the Bath/Bristol area is famously problematic, but I don't think getting there would be. I just had a look at CRT's map of winter stoppages for the K&A here:

https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/media/static_maps/Kennet_Avon_A4.pdf

and it should be possible for you to work around it. Note that it doesn't include the Blakes Lock stoppage at Reading because that's EA not CRT. Having got past that by 1st Nov, your next deadline would be to pass locks 54 and then 49 by 6th Nov. After that you could take your time because you'd be waiting for a stoppage at Bath to end on 8th December, after which your way to Bristol is clear.

As I said before, the river levels on the Thames and Kennet are currently normal, and depending on when you're ready to move the above timetable would be easy. Brentford to Newbury can be done comfortably in a week, and after that you're on a canal (up to the watershed then down the other side) with no worries about river levels until you get to Bath.

Especially if you're new to boating, I'd advise you to only move the boat in daylight and to take someone as crew so you don't have to get through the locks and swing/lift bridges (the K&A has plenty of those) single handed. Preferably someone quite strong as some of those K&A lock gates need a bit of pushing.

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Thanks everyone,

I thought about this all last night and i think im gonna have to stay in london for the winter. a bit gutted about it but its just a combination of timing and if mooring is really that difficult round there. i was sort of thinking i could just find a little spot here and there to hide away for two weeks. I have so little money I cant afford anything like 10quid a day.

So thanks you all for your help. maybe in the spring i might head out bristol bound as the k and a sounds beautiful.

thanks

x

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We just paid £145.80 for 7 nights in Bristol and our boat is 60ft long. We never had any trouble finding moorings in the harbour, in fact most of the visitors mooring where empty. Between Bath and Hanham Lock moorings are few and far between but there are some. None between Hanham and Bristol.

The Avon at the moment is being a pussy cat. Hope I haven't spoken to soon.

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On 10/10/2017 at 00:50, Mike the Boilerman said:

Having taken my boat down to Bristol earlier this year I can only confirm what Dave says. Mooring places on the Avon in the Bristol area are few and far between and mostly already taken up by what look like committed CMers. There appears usually to be space in the (huge) Floating Harbour but the charges are phenomenal for visitors. £80 a week-ish IIRC. A few on-line 'marinas' are dotted here and there but they all look full. Please go there arrange a proper mooring before setting out or you are highly likely to get stranded with nowhere to moor when you get there.

And yes the water levels change drastically with rainfall. It is sobering to cruise down the Avon towards Bristol and see all the plastic bags, coal sacks and general detritus snared up in the tree branches up to 10ft above the current water level, and muse how it all got there.

Not just bags

DSCF4933small.jpg

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On 09/10/2017 at 09:29, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

I think you're right about this bit in particular, and we have therefore all been 'had'...

Could be a typo - plenty of boats named Pike and few called Puck.

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On 10/10/2017 at 08:54, Murflynn said:

yeah, we Bristolians are proud of our heritage and don't want furriners spending more than a couple of days and a few thousand pounds in our fair city.

I have cruised from Bristol to Bath a few times and the only overnight stops have been spent roped up to overhanging trees.  There are 2 water points with pontoons, but they must have been pre-booked when I went past because they are usually occupied by an unoccupied boat as far as I could tell :unsure:.  However I believe you can moor just upstream of Bristol Avon Sailing Club on Mead Lane on the south bank upstream of Saltford lock, but I don't know what the charges are.

I used to work in Bristol and developed a serious dissafection for the place, and was glad that I didn't have to go there anymore after I retired. I still have to go there occassionally, and each visit confirms my feelings about the city. It's a bit unfortunate really as Bristol has some really interesting places, but they need to do something to get the standstill traffic out of the city so that yopui can actually reach them!

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2 hours ago, David Schweizer said:

I used to work in Bristol and developed a serious dissafection for the place, and was glad that I didn't have to go there anymore after I retired. I still have to go there occassionally, and each visit confirms my feelings about the city. It's a bit unfortunate really as Bristol has some really interesting places, but they need to do something to get the standstill traffic out of the city so that yopui can actually reach them!

clearly you are out of step.

 

Bristol is reckoned to be one of the best places to live according to most surveys.

You should bear in mind that visitors want to get to the interesting places, probably at peak times, whilst residents can just enjoy the benefits of the city without necessarily having to get stuck in traffic.  I probably drive to the city centre during working hours 10 times a year and never get stuck in a traffic jam.  The city contains a huge number of large green spaces including 3 river gorges where I can walk for miles away from the traffic.  

But please don't visit - you'll just add to the congestion.

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My children live there and I really enjoy visiting, sometimes by car, once a year in the boat, and next week on the train. Its a seriously good city though I struggle to decide if it or Liverpool is my favourite,  I have heard Liverpool described as "the Bristol of the North" Whenever I visit it just makes me sad that I spent my working life in grotty soton, Bristol would have been so much better.

All cities have traffic problems, the children walk or cycle whenever they can. I'm a bit of an old hippy so the huge alternative culture in Bristol is very appealing, plus some really good eating places for vegetarians.

I think the house prices and bonkers housing market indicate just how desirable the place is. I read somewhere that the housing market in Bristol has recently collapsed and prices are only rising by 16% !!

No wonder residential moorings are in short supply.

.............Dave

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A 25 hp engine on a 20 ft boat is adequate but not excessive. Having done it myself I can say it will be somewhat of a challenge especially on the river fed sections of the K and A, but rewarding. You could always post on the crew wanted section for help.

Ian, The Boater.

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On 13/10/2017 at 08:56, Murflynn said:

I don't think we know yet if the set-up is a lightweight GRP cruiser with a 25hp outboard (agile), a steel narrowboat with a 25hp outboard (sluggish) or a steel narrowboat with a 25hp inboard (well adequate).

when will OP clarify?

 

I doubt they will given they came back a few days ago and announced they were abandoning the trip.  

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It's a 20 foot GRP boat, see this topic:

That means that the engine may be adequate, but if the OP does the trip she'll probably want the crew to be some friend or relative in such a small space.

It would be best to have someone to help, particularly from London to Newbury, and I'd be willing or Ian might, but would she want some random bloke off the Internet aboard?

As MtB says, she seems to have abandoned/postponed the idea, for the good reason that mooring in or near Bristol would be difficult.

 

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4 hours ago, The Boater said:

A 25 hp engine on a 20 ft boat is adequate but not excessive. Having done it myself I can say it will be somewhat of a challenge especially on the river fed sections of the K and A, but rewarding. You could always post on the crew wanted section for help.

Ian, The Boater.

Ive spent the last ten years on a 70 foot boat of about 23 tons with an engine of just under 35Hp. Its been up the Kennet is some pretty bad conditions. We were going up through Newbury one time when when met a boat making no headway at all, we were just able to get round him, attach a rope and pull him up through that bridge 'ole.

..........Dave

Edited by dmr
inserted the missing word
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There are very few places that you can Moor along the river due to its nature , on my last trip to Bristol 2 months ago just about every free mooring and most visitor moorings beyond Weston lock at Bath were occupied . Some with boats that had not moved for quite a few weeks. There is a good cycle path into the outskirts of Bristol ( Bitton) from the centre of Bath, but traffic in Bristol can be heavy with little provision for cyclists I am told.

,I àvoid the river if it is about to rise rapidly, usually 1 to 2 days after heavy rain further  East , as I have been trapped on it and had to many near misses. Travelling back from Bristol can be tricky as quite a few of the river locks are close to weirs. 

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1 hour ago, Murflynn said:

'Redtrousers' Ferguson, the ex-mayor and the champion of cyclists, would not agree with that.

Oh, would that be the same Mayor who spent millions  imposing 20 MPH limits all over the City, and then got caught exceeding the Speeding limit on Bristol Portway?

Edited by David Schweizer
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