Bradford-on-Avon

Yesterday we drove down to Yate to visit Kirsty and David. Sister Sue came and stayed with us too.

After a barbecue at lunchtime - here we are sitting outside before it...

...the rain came down and we retreated inside to finish Kirsty's jigsaw of Boston sent by nephew Jameas and watch Moulin Rouge. There was more rain than we'd seen at home in the last three months put together, but the rain stopped in the morning and went to Bradford-on-Avon for the day.

Here are a few of my photos.

We parked about 1/2 mile from town on a road parallel to the Kennet and Avon canal.

We had hoped to have a boat trip along the canal, but, alas, there was no room for us on the boat.

 I remember enjoying the original BBC Slow 2 hour real-time documentary of a trip along the canal... which you might be able to watch here, Wonderfully relaxing. But the full version doesn't seem to be available at the moment so here is the 4 minute version.

At Upper wharf we were just by this lock.

We headed to the interesting Tithe Barn

There re some lovely houses.

We liked this community garden.

We also visited the ancient St Laurence's Church, which may be as old as tenth century (or even older).

We retuned to Upper Wharf to see if we could get boar trip tickets (unsuccessfully) and had lunch at the café there.

We returned to the town centre admiring the old tearooms by the bridge....

...and some of the shops. Hmm. What are these doing in this window?

The Shambles is somewhat smaller than its York namesake, being all of 150m long.

While the girls visited the charity shops I visited Cru Wines and bought some Grenache Blanc to go with our dinner tonight  and some Bath Blue chesses from the cheese shop.

Time forr an ice-cream as we returned to the car.

...but not before watching a couple of narrowboats pass through the lock.

A lovely day out and the Bath Blue cheese and Granache Blanc wine were both very tasty. Thanks for the suggestion, Sue.

You can see more of my photos here on Flickr.