Wilts & Berks Canal


View Wilts & Berks Canal in a larger map

We've been on a couple of walks along the Chippenham branch of the Wilts & Berks canal recently. Well, actually, every time we leave our house we follow the spur of the canal towards Chippenham; the estate's roads don't have names like Canal Road, Pewsham Lock, Waters Edge for nothing you know! But during 'Archaeology Month' in July the local museum put on a guided walk to follow a stretch of the canal that most people don't see and don't know is quite so close to them - see if you can spot us here. The blue line on my map below shows the route of the walk and the pink line is a (very rough) tracing of the route of the Chippenham branch off the main canal.

It's rather fitting that the modern road follows the line of the filled in branch that came off the main canal and into the centre of Chippenham. I always find it heartening that areas of heavy industry that would have been really busy around a hundred years ago are now completely obliterated by the countryside. It just shows how quickly nature can recover. There is now no sign of the brickworks, lime-kilns, carpenters’ workshops, sawpits, dry-dock, lock-keeper’s cottage; just woodland and fields. I'm also always surprised that we know so little about the industrial and cultural heritage of the areas we live in. Some of these industries, like the brickworks, struggled on into the 20th century, but we know bugger all about them until some volunteer or researcher goes rooting around in the undergrowth.

The Wilts and Berks Canal Trust has spent the best part of 40 years restoring the length of the canal and we've watched their progress between Pewsham Locks and Lacock for over 20 years. They've recently been dredging the section between Pewsham and Reybridge and, for the first time in over 100 years, areas of it now have water. We took these photos on our second walk. This was along the length of the Pewsham to Lacock section (approx 4 miles each way) and, although it may not look much to you - just a pretty stretch of water like you'd see anywhere, this thing that now actually looks like a canal was just boggy ground with a few reeds sticking out of it not that long ago.

The Sustrans cycle route (National Cycle Network Route 403 [an offshoot of NCN4]) follows part of the canal but, unfortunately, the Lacock end has been blocked by a lease dispute with the new landowner for the last 2 years. So if you want to cycle into Lacock you've got to be prepared to heft your bike over 6 stiles, or just padlock it to a fence and walk the last mile or so into the village. Still, it's a pretty walk and there's the reward of an excellent pint in one of Lacock's pubs once you get there (come on, you didn't think we were walking the route for the exercise did you?!).