Kennet and Avon Canal Walking Holiday
in Southern England
from Bristol to Reading (West to East)
via Bath, Devizes, Pewsey, Hungerford and Newbury

This is a 93 mile walking holiday on the River Avon Trail and the Kennet and Avon Canal Towpath.
The Kennet and Avon Canal walking holiday follows the River Avon from Bristol to Bath, and then the whole meandering course of the Kennet and Avon Canal from Bath to the River Thames at Reading.

The route passes through the cities of Bath and Bristol which are great places to visit, with good shopping, restaurants and pubs. This walking holiday is great hiking for visitors to the UK as it offers a taste of England’s history mixed with the modern UK of today. This is a gentle walk, full of contrasts, with bustling cities and quiet river and canal banks.
The Kennet and Avon canal connects the Bristol Channel at Bristol with the River Thames at Reading providing an inland waterway between Bristol and London. On its journey it passes through the magnificent Avon Valley and the Vale of Pewsey.

Highclere Castle, the filming location of
Downton Abbey, is located just 5 miles south of Newbury, and so this
town is ideal to take an extra day to visit Highclere Castle.  It is not
possible to walk from Newbury to Highclere unfortunately as there are
no suitable footpaths, however the castle can be reached easily by taxi.

John Rennie undertook the surveying for the canal, with building commencing in 1794 and completed in 1810. The Dundas Aqueduct and the Avoncliff Aqueduct carry the Kennet and Avon Canal over the River Avon.  However,  the canal enjoyed only thirty years of exclusive business, with the main trade being coal, before it suffered the competition of the Great Western Railway which opened in 1841.
The canal was then deliberately run down and neglected until the post war years when forty years of hard work and renewed interest resulted in the the canal being reopened in 1990.