Jane’s Walk 2026 – Day 1
I can hardly believe that exactly a year has gone by since we finished our last sponsored walk for our 2 charities, ZANE and The Community Emergency Foodbank.
A lot of discussion took place in the spring about where we should go this year, bearing in mind that we had to find a route that was reasonably flat, with no dangerous B roads to navigate, no ploughed fields and that we had enough kind donors living nearby who were prepared to give us and our driver Richard a bed for the night. We eventually thought that probably our best bet was to walk along one of the many canals that traverse the country. I was rather sad about this as I enjoyed the adventure of going across country and the uncertainty of what was coming next. I felt that walking along a canal for 14 days would be rather dull. However, I had to concede that we had a combination of 164 years between us and that perhaps this idea was more sensible and at least we would not get lost!
We finally decided that the Avon/Kennet canal would be the best bet. Both canals had been completed by 1810 to link the river Avon at Bath and the river Thames at Newbury, creating important trade routes from Bristol to London, bringing coal, timber, grain and other goods during the 19th century. The opening of the Great Western Railway in 1880 affected the canals’ freight trade badly, and after the Second World War, when both canals were hardly used commercially and in a dilapidated state, it was decided to close them. This caused a groundswell of protest by the locals. A major restoration campaign, led by volunteers and organisations including the Kennet and Avon Canal Trust, gradually restored the canals, which were finally opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1990.
We start our walk in the harbour basin of the River Avon. We had spent a happy previous night with a donor in her beautiful ground floor flat in one of the imposing large Edwardian houses in Clifton. We met up with one of our grandsons, Isaac, and his girlfriend Izzy, who were joining us for the day as they were not working—being bank holiday Monday. The old harbour area has been attractively restored with many of the old redundant warehouses having been turned into flats with ground floor restaurants, clubs and bars looking over the river, making it a very popular area for university students. Isaac pointed out many of the bars and clubs he had frequented while a student.
The river winds through the city and we pass where the Colston statue was notoriously thrown into the river some years ago. We circumnavigate the imposing Victorian Bristol Station and meet up with Charles, a ZANE Trustee, and his wife, who will walk with us for the next few days. Gradually we leave the city, passing the huge Bournville chocolate factory, now turned into flats, and walk along pleasant wooded pathways well used, today busy with walkers and their dogs, and stop for a chat with a number of them. The river is low due to the hot, dry summer, making the banks too steep for Moses to go down for a swim. It is also, we notice, very brown in colour, not conducive for human swimming despite the warm weather.
We have lunch in an attractive pub called The Chequers, completing our walk in Keynsham. Altogether, a very pleasant first day.
