Canal boats trapped in Bath after waterway closed for safety reasons
Several houseboat owners are crammed into a one-mile stretch of canal
Slow-placed “chaos” is unfolding on the canal in Bath, as boaters are trapped on an increasingly crowded mile of water.
Earlier this month, contractors working on the A36 dug straight through the roof of a canal tunnel which passes under the road. Now the canal tunnel is closed to boats and pedestrians on safety grounds. Some boaters fear it will be closed for months.
It leaves those south of the closure trapped on the last mile of the Kennet & Avon Canal before it meets the Avon. At the same time, many narrowboats which have been moored on the Avon all summer are now trying to leave before winter’s floods and fast water, leading them to all squeeze into one single mile of canal.
Keith of Bath Narrowboats said: “We have got a lot of boaters coming up off the river. I feel for them. If the weather gets bad there is nowhere for them to go.”
“I’m just glad to get a place,” Michael West tells me from the stern of his boat which he has moored on the canal just south of Sydney Gardens. A former lock keeper, he has been living on a boat for five years and is working on making paintings of waterways. He said: “I was down on the river but it’s a bit too dangerous down there. … At this time of year all boats move to a safe space.”
He went through more than ten locks on Tuesday as he tried to get off the river, meeting many other boaters in the same situation on the way. It was dark by the time he found a space to moor in Bath. He said: “It is kind of chaos.”
Jorge has also come off the river and was mooring his boat further down the canal when I met him, talking with fellow boater Tallulah who had just done the same. He said: “I reckon there’s going to be a lot of this over the next few weeks so I just thought I would get in early.”
His main concern is getting water. Another boater moored nearby suggested they all connect their water pipes together. But it is not all bad. He said: “It will be nice not to have to move for a bit. This is a prime location. It’s a nice place to be stuck.”
Tallulah is also moored nearby. She said: “I’m lucky I have got a small one so I could squeeze in a gap that wasn’t really big enough.”
It is not her first time being stuck. She said: “Last year someone sunk in the top lock and another lock set on fire so we were stuck down here. … There’s always something broken. There’s always something we hear about.” But she added: “I didn’t get an email this time. I heard about it through word of mouth.”
Rick, another boater, told me: “We need to know exactly how long we are going to be stuck there and what services there are.”
Rick predicts that somewhere between 20 and 40 narrowboats will be coming off the river and looking for spaces on the canal for winter, unless some go the other way to Bristol’s Floating Harbour. Under normal conditions, he thinks there would only be space for another eight boats to fit on the single mile of canal. He said: “People are going to have to start doubling up.”
But that is not his main worry. Rick is one of the few boaters to have been inside the tunnel and seen the damage. The hole was large enough for him to see daylight through it.
There is a single lane closure in place on the A36 as it crosses the canal above, but traffic is still passing just metres from the hole. Rick said: “I would have expected a risk-averse engineer to at least have put down some steel plates. … There is a big hole in the apex of the arch which is not good.”
It has now been there for almost two weeks. Contractor Volker Highways had been digging a trench into the road surface in order to install a shared used path for Bath and North East Somerset Council, when they broke through the roof of the 200-year-old canal tunnel. The trench now ends suddenly and is covered by plastic sheeting at the point where the road crosses the canal.
“Luckily nobody was hurt,” Keith told me. Bath Narrowboats is based just nearby and he knows the city and canal well. He said: “What we are concerned about is that road is still open and there’s big lorries going across it and it’s got a big hole in.”
He thinks the council could take the pressure off the bridge if they reopened Sydney Road to traffic, an alternate route around Sydney Gardens which was controversially closed to form a low-traffic neighbourhood in 2024. He said: “If they opened that, they would not have a big queue of traffic miles back.”
Though the council has not shared an estimated timeline, Keith thinks the tunnel will be closed for months. He said: “In the next couple of weeks it’s all going to kick off because all those boats on the river are coming up and they’ve got nowhere to go.”
The closure has already been disruptive to some. Rick was trying to get a boat to Bradford-upon-Avon to sell it and Michael had been aiming to get to the other side of Bath. Neither are now able to do so.
Colin, who has moored near the Deep Lock, had planned to take his boat to his family in Coventry in time for Christmas. The closure of the tunnel has put an end to that plan but he is not too worried about the prospect of being stuck in Bath. He told me: “I’m not on any timetable.”
He has fuel and gas where he has moored his boat, and only faces a slightly longer trek to get water. He and his wife have been living on the canal network for the last five years. “I enjoy it,” he said: “It’s a good life.”
Colin said: “I realised when I retired onto the canal, it’s canal rules. You don’t make plans, you have ideas.”
A spokesperson for Bath and North East Somerset Council said: “Safety is our first priority and engineers are closely monitoring the bridge. We are continuing with the eastbound one-lane Beckford Road closure, as well as the closure of the canal and adjacent towpath at the north end of Sydney Gardens. We want to thank people for their patience and of course we will give further updates when we have them.”
A closure notice from the Canal & River Trust said: “Please be advised that we are awaiting an update from BANES. Therefore, for safety reasons, and until a structural engineer from Bath and North East Somerset Council can carry out a detailed assessment of the structure, the canal navigation and towpath will remain temporarily closed.”