River Avon (Warwickshire)

This is the Warwickshire Avon — the river that flows through Stratford-upon-Avon, so it is sometimes called Shakespeare’s Avon — not the Bristol Avon of Bath nor the Hampshire Avon of Salisbury, both of which share the name. It is navigable for about 47 miles from Alveston Weir, just above Stratford, down through Worcestershire and into Gloucestershire to meet the River Severn at Tewkesbury, passing seventeen locks on the way.

Boaters have long divided it in two. The Lower Avon runs up from Tewkesbury to Evesham; the Upper Avon carries on from there through Pershore and Bidford-on-Avon to Stratford. At Stratford it connects with the Stratford-upon-Avon Canal, which climbs away to the Birmingham network, and at Tewkesbury it joins the Severn, so the Avon forms one leg of the popular ring routes through the West Midlands.

The river was first made navigable in the 1630s by William Sandys, under letters patent from Charles I, who used his own money to build weirs and locks between Tewkesbury and Stratford. That early navigation decayed once the railways took its trade. It was brought back in the twentieth century by two volunteer bodies, the Lower Avon Navigation Trust from 1950 and the Upper Avon Navigation Trust, which reopened the river to Stratford in 1974. The whole navigation is now cared for by the Avon Navigation Trust.

For much of its length the Avon is a gentle, rural river winding through the orchards and market gardens of the Vale of Evesham.