The 2023 Kennet and Avon Canal Christmas Floating Fayre

 And so to Bradford-on-Avon for the Christmas Floating Fayre on the Kennet and Avon Canal. We could have gone on Saturday, which was a cold but sunny day enhanced by the winter's first frost - a Frost Fayre! -  but someone had football to watch, and so we found ourselves east-bound on the M4 on Sunday, in pervasive mist and drizzle. 

Fortunately it was - well, not clearing up exactly, but at least not quite as wet by the time we arrived, found a parking place on Trowbridge Road and walked to the wharf. And although I've made enough winter visits to friends living on the cut to know that it's the most unromantic of lives, up to your arse in mud on the tow path, the last few autumn leaves reflected in the water, the coloured boats and woodsmoke did look very picture-rescue, as someone I know said without a trace of irony the other day. 

First, a quick chat with Dru, who was in pole position on the Lower Wharf visitor moorings, doing a roaring trade selling her art and poetry books. As usual, I'd bought enough of her calendars for the people on my present list who appreciate them, but had forgotten to get one for myself, so I needed another of those. I also couldn't resist a pack of cards featuring a frozen-looking heron on Widcombe top lock in Bath. 

Looking down at the River Avon

Then we wandered half a mile or so west to see our friend Jinny, and meet - for the first time - her dog, Millie, a Macedonian rescue who joined her on NB Netty earlier in the year. 

First glimpse of Millie

After hugs and a catch-up, we wandered back to the pub for cider ...

... and then headed up to the Upper Wharf, where there was a Barber Boat, complete with revolving pole. I have to say, I remember the ones from my childhood being just red and white, and have laboured all my life under the impression that the red represents blood. No idea, then, what bodily fluid the blue might stand for.

Back at the Lower Wharf, Dru's stall was about eight deep in customers so we sidled past without managing to say goodbye. A lovely couple of hours out, though, and a welcome change of scene. 

Art for heart's sake

 

It was a lovely morning this morning, by which I mean it wasn't raining, and Cwtch and I were off on an adventure, to visit Jinny and Dru on the Kennet and Avon at Seend in Wiltshire, where there's a Victorian postbox. 

I parked in the car park of the Barge Inn - there are, I think, at least three pubs so named on the K&A - and mounted a look out from the bridge, upstream - no, wait, canals don't have a stream, do they - east ... 

... and west, where I could see Jinny and Dru in the distance, coming to meet us.   

By now it was sunny with just the right amount of cloud and I felt pretty chipper even though I'm a hopeless winter depressive.

Dru's boat, NB Eve, was looking spectacular with its Progress Pride flag, but we were headed for Jinny's NB Netty, two boats along, despite what Dru considers her less than optimum supply of tea. 

Ooh, and it was warm inside by the wood burner, much warmer than at home, where I haven't put the central heating on yet. After a very happy Cwtch had spent some time exploring her first ever boat and located Jinny's lost socks, her store of cheese, a packet of cat food and the rather tasty tasteful leg of her decorated Lloyd Loom chair, Jinny and I hunkered down for a chat and a stint folding and sorting cards and pairing them with envelopes, ready for the Floating Market the weekend after next. 

Through the window I could see a blaze of hawthorn berries, though sadly no sign of the redwings or fieldfares that frequent them ...

... while the doors afforded a view of a gold mannequin, perched on the roof of the boat between Netty and Eve.

More (perfectly satisfactory) tea and ginger biscuits later, it was time to be thinking about going. Night creeps up so quickly these days, and I wanted to be nearly home before all the light disappeared.

Hooray for dear friends, cuddly collies and bright November days. Hopefully the weather will be as lovely for the market as it was today. 

Poetting at the 2022 Kennet & Avon Summer Floating Fayre

And so to the summer floating market on the Kennet and Avon canal, this time on Darlington Wharf in Bath. (They call it the floating fayre these days, but I like floating market, as it sends me straight to Neil Gaiman's 'Neverwhere'.) 

We weren't entirely sure whether we should take Cwtch with us or not; she's had a sheltered life so far, especially during her formative months, being a lockdown pup, and she was quite nervous at the Christmas floating market in Bradford-on-Avon, but she took it all in her stride this time. (Apart from some bloke we met asking if she was a husky ... 😂 )

We had a cup of coffee with Dru and Jinny on the towpath next to NB Eve. (It was so good to see Jinny back at the west end of the K&A and to be able to give her a hug at last.) Then Dru mentioned the poetry reading taking place at the buskers' spot and how I could read and I said I had no poems with me to read (despite having the Satchel of Poetry on me) and Dru said you've got one in the book and put a copy of 'Poets Afloat' in my hands and the Northerner said I lit up like a Christmas tree - in summer! - and that was that. 

Here's Jinny, Dru and Mitch reading their poems. 

A flying visit to the 2021 Kennet & Avon Winter Floating Fayre

Thanks to the pandemic, it's been nearly two years since I was last in one of my favourite places locally, which is Bradford-on-Avon, and I've missed it, so it was good to visit today to do some Christmas shopping at the Floating Market - or Floating Fayre, as I think it's called these days. 

The Tithe barn

We took our collie, Cwtch, with us, who's been to few places apart from the field and the wood and the common and whose whinnies of despair from the back seat of the car started in earnest as we turned the wrong way at the junction - ie not up the road that leads to same.

End gable

Up on the tow path of the Kennet and Avon canal it was quite busy, with a lot going on that was new to Cwtch, so we decided not to stay beyond the point where it might get too much for her. 

There was time, though, to buy three calendars and some cards from Dru Marland, and an etching from her daughter, Katie. I hadn't seen Dru since the pandemic was just starting so it was good to have a (heads turned) hug. 

Then back to the car, past the trompe l'oeuil doves in their dovecote ... 

... and the magnificent beech pollard off Pound Lane ...

... to leave with our eyes full of colour and light.

An Arising from the Settee of Suffering

I've spent a lot of time reclining lately, mainly because sitting upright is too agonising. When I hobble round to the surgery, my GP wonders if it could be fibromyalgia that is causing this widespread pain, as well as the increasingly well documented arthritis. Am I under a lot of stress at the moment? 

I wonder if he's come up with this by himself or whether he's swayed by the notes from the physiotherapist. It seems to me that fibromyalgia is treated much the same way as depression was in the 1970s - something women get, and just keep necking the valium, love. And anyhow, I don't really care what they call it; all I care about is that it hurts. 

Maybe, I concede.

I decide my strategy of resting up and only going out when I have to - which is most days anyway - isn't working. Alice Oswald is appearing at the Bristol Poetry Institute and I've missed hearing top poets read their work in Bristol since the demise of the poetry festival. Moreover, the last time we heard her, she was astounding. That evening remains the best reading I've ever been to.








Alice's latest book is 'Nobody', ostensibly about a bit-part player in the Odyssey: the poet who was charged with guarding Clytemnestra by Agamemnon, and subsequently marooned on a rocky island in the middle of the Mediterranean by the queen's lover, Aegisthus. Really it's a paean to the ocean, and as Alice recites it by heart in darkness, I find myself drowning in it. There's not so much as a cough to break the spell. Not a shuffle or a shifting, and when, after an hour, we can finally move, I find I can't. I can barely walk back to the car. Perhaps I should try swimming.

Saturday it's off to the Floating Market on the Kennet and Avon canal at Bradford-on-Avon with Hazel Hammond. I'm delighted to see that despite the manky weather, Dru Marland is doing a roaring trade in art on the tow path. She squeezes in a quick coffee with us between sales, and we repair to the pub for lunch with a haul of thirteen 2019 calendars of boating life between us. Twenty per cent of the profits go to the Floaty Boat Fund, which helps boaters keep their homes afloat when hit by unexpected problems.  You can get yours here.

As we leave the canal, a pair of ravens croak overhead. Hazel hasn't been inside the tithe barn so we drift through its cavernousness in almost darkness.

Back up on the tow path there's a lot of shantying going on, and the lights of the market seem to float through the twilight. 

Twenty days till the year turns and it starts getting lighter again. Not long to go. 

A One Stoat Day

You wait ages for a Bradford-on-Avon to come along, and then two appear in as many days. Thursday we were in town for Words and Ears in the Swan, with Rosie Bailey and June Hall as guest readers.

It was a golden evening.

And today it was the biannual Kennet & Avon Floating Market (summer edition). I drove down through a strange yellow countryside in glorious sun. A stoat ran across the road (well) in front of my car and it felt like a good omen.

The River Avon looked lush but the grass outside the Tithe Barn, where, six summers ago, we watched a couple celebrate their handfasting in teeming rain, was shockingly threadbare. 

Go straight back to summer 1976. Do not pass Go. Do not collect £200.

The young woman charged with unlocking the Barn let me in the small side entrance and I got to see it fill with light as she opened each huge door. A bird shifted high in the rafters. It was only when it moved its head with a distinctive bob that I knew it was a pigeon. 

Up on the canal I found Dru and the offspring-formerly-known-as-Boat-Teenager. 'Lovely day for it!' I said in a spirit of stoatly optimism. And the skies opened.

I held an umbrella over one display of art until Dru had time to clear it. Then we repaired to NB Eve and drank coffee whitened with Marvel until it went off. 

Back outside, I rendezvoused with my friend Helen and we wandered up the canal. The towpath was as interesting as ever. 

Back at the market the pub appeared to be shut. Helen and I had a drink and a sit-down in the cafe. It started to rain again. 

On the towpath Dru and Katie were scrambling to get their art back into the dry. I headed for home and some chores I had to do for my mother ... 

... my haul of treasure tucked inside my jacket to keep it dry.

Original artwork for The Leaping Word logo by Dru Marland

Zines by Katie Marland