The Kennet and Avon Canal - the section from Reading to Hungerford via Newbury.

About the Kennet and Avon Canal in England.

As the canal's name suggest it's partially a river navigation since it uses the River Kennet between Reading and Newbury and the River Avon between Bath and Bristol. The purely "canal" part of the waterway is 57 miles in length out of a total distance of 100.25 miles. The River Kennet was turned into a river navigation for goods traffic in 1723 creating a route to the River Thames and had wharves at Newbury, Aldermaston and Reading. The river was used for transporting various goods to London and into the Midlands including timber, malt, flour and cheese and the returning barges carried bulk goods such as coal and iron. The barges used on the navigation were considerably larger than standard canal narrow boats and a feature of the whole Kennet and Avon Canal are the large locks. Similarly the River Avon had been turned into a river navigation from Bristol as far as Bath and the two rivers were connected in 1810 when Engineer John Rennie created a 57 mile long artificial cut i.e. the 100.25 mile long Kennet and Avon Canal came into being.The canal never did carry as much commercial traffic as was envisaged and was subsequently hurt financially by loss of traffic because of the opening of the Great Western Railway which follows the route of the canal for some distance. Eventually the GWR purchased the Kennet and Avon Canal but did not maintain it properly and navigation became quite difficult in some places - regular boat movements eventually ended during the 1930s. The canal remained open however and still provided a navigable through route until 1951 when it was finally closed. There has always been great interest in English Canals and fortunately in 1962 The Kennet & Avon Canal Trust was formed with a view to getting the canal fully restored and navigable and with the help of volunteers and of British Waterways the canal was once again navigable in 1990.
Our topics about the Kennet and Avon Canal are split over three pages with this page covering the navigation from The Thames at Reading through to the edge of Little Bedwyn. Next our Kennet and Avon (Central) is about the canal from Little Bedwyn to the outskirts of Bradford-on-Avon and our Kennet and Avon - West covers the canal from Bradford-on-Avon via Bath to it's end at Bristol.

The section of The Kennet and Avon Canal between Reading, Aldermaston and Newbury.

The towpath along this part of the canal is in very good condition both for cyclists and for walkers and the countryside walked through is really beautiful. Although this 23 mile stretch of the canal is not too much of a trip for cyclists it is a considerable trek to walk in one go. Fortunately the canal is accompanied by a railway line but sadly the once free parking at Aldermaston Station has been changed. On weekends one side of the station is a usually empty pay and display and the other empty side allows parking by permit only - all run by a greedy pigs setup called APCOA which is a yankee company run out of Germany for goodness sake!. Anyway the trip along the canal can be broken in two with one railway ride from Aldermaston to Reading (and then walking back) and walking the other half of this part of the canal can be achieved by taking the railway to Newbury and walking back from there. Quite a few trains do run on Saturdays and somewhat less do the trip on Sundays but up to date times need to be checked on the First Great Western website or National Rail site.

Locks and turf sided locks on the Kennet and Avon Canal.

The river navigation's first locks were turf sided locks - i.e. the lock chamber's were lined from above the low water level with turf sloping out at 45 degrees - below low water level the sides were planked vertically. These turf locks used a huge amount of water but The River Kennet could usually easily provide this - however most of these turf sided canal locks were eventually changed into brick and wooden planked vertical locks. Fortunately two of the Kennet and Avon Canal turf sided locks have been preserved and can be seen at Garston Lock and at Monkey Marsh Lock (photos a little way below).

Garston turf-sided Lock is a particularly good example of such a turf lock

- it's totally surrounded by trees, wildflowers, reeds and so on. Also at Garston turf-sided lock there are two World War 2 pillboxes (which are now under preservation) both of which fit in beautifully with the immediate area.

Monkey Marsh turf-sided lock on the Kennet and Avon Canal.

Located on the southern edge of Thatcham, The Kennet and Avon Canal has a second example of a rare turf-sided Lock i.e. Monkey Marsh turf lock 90. Built under the supervision of navigation engineer John Hore around the 1720s this lock has been sort of cleaned up a little compared to Garston's turf lock but is still a good example of such locks. Monkey Marsh turf lock is important enough to be listed as an ancient moument by English Heritage so hopefully it's care-takers - namely British Waterways - will not try and destroy it by replacing it for something modern.