Canal Capers (or, An Adventurous Day on the Wey River Navigations)

You may remember this map of the Wey River Navigations from one of the infamous Long Boat blogs posted a while back (Keezee was going through a bit of a long boat phase at that stage - he says he's over it now). Anyway, if you check out the map closely you will notice some canal walks marked. We decided that Walk 3 might be a nice way to spend an hour or so before lunch at The Anchor.

Well for the first hour it was indeed a nice way to spend the morning - walking along the canal, enjoying the country air and checking out the remains of the Newark Priory. It was the two hours afterwards that weren't so much fun - especially when the marked trail finished abruptly at the end of a church graveyard. No problem - a quick walk over some graves, down a busy single lane road with no footpath, across a golf course, through someone's garden, then over a wonky bridge soon saw us back at the canal path. We missed lunch unfortunately (by several hours), and a few choice words were spoken, but hey, that's life when you're an adventurer.


The girls pretending they own the mansion you can see in the background. It has its own long boat dock and all.


This is an historic building on the canal in which a mildly famous historical figure lived at one time (details unfortunately forgotten).


Another shot for the mantlepiece - that's the Newark Priory in the background.


St Edwards Church, Pyrford. (1:40 hrs into the walk).
This church was built in 1140 AD.


The nice lady who volunteers here tells us that Queen Elizabeth visited here - Elizabeth I that is. We worked out that even at that time it would have been a very old building.