Shangri La at Bradford on Avon

Semington to Bradford

After our drydocking at Semington(See this post), as were were already half way there, we thought we would continue on down the Kennet and Avon canal, to Bradford on Avan, and on to Bath, spend a day there and then return to Foxhangers.

The trip down to Bradford took us just over 5 hours, only 2 locks and 5 1/2 miles. Why so long you might ask? This stretch of the Kennet and Avon canal is particularly shallow, with some very narrow, overgrown sections, and, Shangri La is a widebeam boat.

And there is one particularly low bridge near Marsh Farm, which necessitated folding down the wheelhouse.

Shangri La in lock – with wheelhouse down

We spent a pleasant day and 2 nights moored in Bradford, and explored the town.

Bradford to Avoncliff to Foxhangers

Set off in the morning towards Bath, expecting to go over the Avoncliff and Dundas aquaducts. Well, the stretch of the canal from Bradford to Avoncliff was even narrower and shallower than the previous stretch, and we hardly made any speed at all, scraping along the bottom of up against overhanging trees.

We got as far as Avoncliff, and decided to give up. We managed to turn at the winding hole at Avoncliff, dredged our way back to Bradford, up through the lock, and a bit further up, moored up for the night. A total distance of 4 miles, 1 lock, and it took us about 5 hours. Which meant we barely made 1 mile per hour!

Over the next 2 days, we continued back up the canal, overnighting near Semington, and on to back to Foxhangers. This entailed 6 locks, 5 swing bridges, over 5 miles, and took just over 7 hours of boating. Again we didn’t achieve much more than 1 1/2 miles per hour.

More repairs!

Shangri La is a very well equipped boat, and not only has a bow thruster, but has a stern thruster as well. Having handled most types of ships and boats in my time, I didn’t expect to use the stern thruster much. How wrong was I!

In this very shallow and narrow canal, “bank effect” causes the stern to be sucked in towards the bank, and the only way to sort it out, is to stop the main propellor, and use the stern thruster to push the stern back into the middle of the canal again.

(Remember the container ship Ever Given which got stuck across the Suez Canal? Well that was nearly certainly caused by Bank Effect)

Where I am going with this, is that on the last day, I was using the stern thruster, and there was an almighty noise – something rather large and heavy being sucked into the thruster, which effectively destroyed the thruster propellor.

Shangri La – Stern Thruster Propellor

Not only is the Kennet and Avon canal shallow, narrow and overgrown, but full of all sorts of rubbish, something of which probably caused that damage.

The upshot of this, is I now need to replace the whole stern thruster, as they don’t make this particular one any more. Which is going to be somewhat pricey!

(You know what boat stands for? – Break Out Another Thousand!)

Future plans?

Well, we had intended to make the trip up the K and A and onto the Thames, cruise up to Lechlade, back down to Harleyford Marina in Marlow, where we would have taken the boat out the water and wintered her on the hard.

Due to a combination of factors, personal delays, low water levels and damaged locks on the K and A, we decided to put that off till next year.