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The Bradford-on-Avon Loop

Returning from a week’s e-biking in Wales took me right past Bradford-on-Avon, a good chance to paddle the Avon again, this time 17km all the way to Bath via five weirs. Last year I did the shorter loop from BoA, returning via the Kennet canal which runs alongside and even crosses the river via a couple of aqueducts back to BoA. The Avon river was the far more agreeable stage.

We were midway through the summer’s fifth heatwave, with up to 35°C forecast in Bradford. I wasn’t sure this was a good idea but hoped the shady Avon would be a few degrees cooler with added splash to hand. I assumed river levels may be much lower than normal, with water diverted to keep the canals full. In fact the Avon was the same as last year, if not a tad higher. Perhaps the exceptionally wet winter had filled the aquifers right up.
Again, I tried to buy a day pass as mentioned here, but the volunteer at the C&RT canalside gazebo in BoA had not heard of such a thing and advised I just go an enjoy my paddle. Looking later online, I couldn’t fathom how to buy a C&RT day paddle pass for the Avon.

As before, I put in below the 14th-century Barton Bridge. All around seemed much less busy, as if people were staying indoors on very hot days, any activity being too enervating. Soon I was passing under gorgeous mature tree canopies which make this section of the Avon so appealing. No one else was on the water. An odd racket turned into the train chugging unusually slowly towards Bradford. I hoped to be on that train in a few hours to see where I’d come from.

I eased the boat down Avoncliff weir (above left) and worked my way out through the thick weeds and under the aqueduct, then down the steeper Limpley Stoke weir at KM5, this time noticing a nasty rebar rod right below the awkward portage. Looking from below, I might have tried accelerating off the river-right side of the wider, 4-foot straight drop (above right), but we know how that can end, even without hidden rebar.
A plain old steel canoe chute as found on the Tarn (left), would be so easy to install. But chutes, let alone easy portages are not the game here, even before you get to the cruise boat reaches below Bathampton weir on the edge of the city where a canoe shooting under the bow of a 6-m wide tourist boat would be bad form.

Soon after the Frome confluence the Avon turns north and the wind pushed me through reed clumps and along the shady banks. A few people were splashing about at the Dundas Aqueduct KM6.5 (below) where last year I climbed up and joined the Kennet canal back to Bradford – a bit of a dogwater slog.

I checked the map; up ahead was Warleigh weir at KM8.5 (below), a popular bathing spot which I heard before I saw. With temps in the mid-30s this was a good place to pass the day. I should have verified exactly where the best spot was to portage here, but trying later online was none the wiser. As long as there’s not a waterfall drop, it can be done anywhere, so I inched slowly among the bathers towards the narrows river left, and dragged the TXL down the piled up rubble to the water; no helpful steps here.

Working my way out through more reeds, soon I was back on the deserted Avon. This really is one of the loveliest rivers I’ve paddled in England. Yes, 500-year old weirs interrupt the flow but other than that it looks natural and feels like it’s not changed in centuries. Perhaps the absence of powered boats combined with awkward paddle portages help keep it that way.

Huge grey herons lifted off like pterodactyls to make a short hop down stream, while cormorants dived under my boat. A couple of times the thick, grey-blue reeds became a bit of a maze and I had to haul myself through boat-wide corridors. At one point I found myself squeezing a paddle’s length past a pair of mute swans leading their fluffy grey cygnets and got a nasty warning hiss. I wonder what I’d do if they attacked but am pleased to read that ‘breaking your arm with its wing’ is a myth. It’s just the beak and clawed feet you’d want to dodge.

Out in the sun is was baking and my water was running out. I took to dousing with river water and even took a glug. The toxic state of British rivers is a worry, but someone recently explained it takes a storm to mobilise nasty effluent run-off, along with opportunistic sewage discharges by water companies. So with no rain for well over two months, I figured the water was OK. According to a Rivers Trust map, this part of the Avon gets off quite lightly until you reach Bath.

I had a chat with a paddler in an old fibreglass kayak enjoying his retirement with a drift back downstream. I asked him about shooting the apex of bath’s Pulteney weir which was my plan, but he explained getting out and pulling the boat over was the way to do it. Later a group of boarders glided by, led by a kneeling woman using a kayak paddle.
‘That’s the way to do it, kayak paddle. Much easier.’ [if not standing] I could not help blurting out in a fit of mansplaining.
And to underline that point, another seated woman at the back of the group was struggling left to right with an overlong boarding paddle.

The Avon turns southwest near Bathampton, losing the shady banks and at times putting me into the hot wind. I was flagging, parched and by now counting the bridges. The cooling dousing effect wasn’t really lasting.

I’d also forgotten about Bathampton weir (KM13.5; above) near a road bridge, but heard the familiar rush of falling water. I struggled with the boat down the water-worn, dried weed steps, watched by a cruise boat doing a u-ey.
Now on the outskirts of Bath, three more bridges brought me to Robert Adam’s 250-year-old Pulteney bridge just before Bath’s superb, neo-classically set Pulteney Weir (below). Up till this point, with the dense, tree-lined banks, you’d never guess you were in the middle of a city.

The Pulteney Weir was once a regular diagonal arrangement, like the medieval weirs upstream, but with the installation of city flood barriers in 1971, it was rebuilt as a curved parabola with what in some normal-flow images might pass for a kayak-friendly nick at the apex that isn’t actually a canoe chute. Check out a great series of before-, during-, and after photos here.

In 2012 it was even stood in for thre Seine as a location for the Rusel Crowe character’s suicide in the film of Les Miserables.

Arriving at the weir I was expecting hyperactive teenage frolickers goofing about, as upriver or in days of old (left). But only silent waterfowl lined the weir’s terraced edges like sentries, waiting to nab a passing fish.
So I paddled round to the roller ramp for a better look and decided shooting the apex might be risky. Once below, I let eddies suck me towards the apex before getting flushed back out and carrying on downstream

Just after nearby St John’s church, and before the rail bridge an easy take-out ramp appeared river left. On Google there’s also a floating jetty another 300m downstream, right before Halfpenny footbridge leading directly into the station. At the ramp a guy was sat against the wall, working his way through a slab of Holsten, explaining me he was summoning up the nerve to take a swim. But he was pretty far gone so I hoped he’d just stick with the cans

I was parched too but here in Bath you’re never more than a stone’s throw from an overpriced juice bar, and Bath Spa station was just 10-minute walk for the short ride back to Bradford, closely tracing the Avon I’d just paddled.
That would have been a great end to this trip but that slow train I’d seen earlier was indeed a bad sign; buckling overheated rails had already caused derailments elsewhere in the UK, and trains services out of Bath were delayed or cancelled. So I piled onto a crowded bus which barely passed the river, bought another three pints of fruit smoothy in Bradford and took the hot drive home.