504 locks, 613½ miles, 18 Tunnels, 28 swing bridges and 9 lift bridges since Nov 2006
Saturday was time to move on again so we moved up to the facilities block by
It was a fairly uneventful trip until we rounded a corner and saw a fully harnessed horse walking along the towpath towards us followed by the Kennet Trust wide beam trip boat. Naturally we had to give them a wide berth.
The full load of passengers appeared to be thoroughly enjoying the experience. The other thing of note was the Victorian Vicarage next to St Mary’s church as we entered the village.
Once we arrived at Kintbury we moored up while Derek on Kalimera went and finished watering up then reversed back to where we are and moored up. We had no sooner done this when the horse re-appeared under the bridge arch. This time the crew had a problem of ensuring the tow rope didn’t snag any of the moored boats, one tall gentleman was standing near the bow holding the rope above his head while another was walking along the tow path also with the rope above his head trying to clear chimneys and TV aerials. Without batting an eyelid the horse just kept plodding on with a few gentle words from his handler.
What a fantastic sight to see the horse in full harness as they would have been over a century ago.
This afternoon we went for a walk up into the village where we found these cottages with their front doors opening right onto the roadway.
The road is also very narrow at this point. We also went and had a look at St Mary’s church which is probably one of the best restored churches we have seen. There must be a large active congregation in the district because the amount of restoration work done would have cost a small fortune.
There was also the coat of arms up on the wall dating 1683 and the clock face on the tower looked new or restored.
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