Bathwick Hill Stores

All of you who have ridden the Kennet & Avon canal over the last ten years or so will be familiar with the Bathwick Hill Stores, as we used to stop there on every trip for no real reason other than it was an old-fashioned type shop with a real character of an owner, Ken Smith. It was really too early in the ride for a stop but we always enjoyed going in there for the banter.

I do believe that Paul White and I stopped there for the first time when we rode a really horrible version of the ride from Reading to Bristol around 2002. I had a sore arse and Paul was feeling knackered. Ever since then we stopped there on every trip from Bristol to Reading.

There used to be a Jaguar showroom a few doors up which closed. Tesco applied to turn it into a metro and Ken managed to hold them off, with the support of the Bathwick community, for a number of years, but eventually Tesco succeeded and Ken, like so many other small traders up against the big boys, had to close down last year. Sadly he he passed away last September. This is the newpaper write-up:

http://www.thisisbath.co.uk/news/Bathwick-mourns-shopkeeper-Ken/article-1321239-detail/article.html