Hinckley Monday 31 August 2015

It rained from the early hours this morning and was still raining when we got up, but we have a saying. “Rain before 7, fine at 11” well it was actually 11-30 when it stopped and we were off by quarter to twelve, the problem was it started again an hour later.

I don’t expect we will see many more or these around in the next few years, at one time the telegraph poles would have followed the canal for miles, just like they did the lanes. Look how they put the bracing pole to the left hand side as the poles would not have been in line due to the bend in the canal. I would also think that at one time this part of the country there would have  been a lot of heaps  like this. Today its hard to imagine this area’s past.

As we passed one of the canal side houses it was obvious to me that this chap thinks a lot of his boat.

I am very pleased to report that Dr. Who is in Nuneaton at the moment, or he was today, or is that was in the future. Anyway he left his Tardis by the canal, two very different forms of travel. By now it was starting to rain again but it didn’t slow this canoeist down, watching him I can now see why a canoe passing a moored boat causes so much disturbance, not only is the canoe going through the water it is actually going up and down with every paddle stroke when the paddler is working hard. This is a steady rhythm and so builds up a lot of water movement alone, hence the large wash from a small, light vessel.

We turned into the Ashby Canal, did I mention we were going down there, well we are. As it was chucking it down with rain and I had done a couple of hours so had a reasonable charge in the batteries we stopped on the 48 hr visitor moorings by bridge 5. You need fat fenders here as the edge is interlinked concrete that slopes into the canal so the base plate bangs. At the beginning of the moorings there is a sunken Narrowboat that is leaking both diesel and black oil into the canal, not a major incident but I thought it best to inform CRT on their out of hours number 0800 4799947. This is a call handling service and about half an hour later a CRT personnel rang me back to get details. They didn’t know about the boat sinking so the owner may also be unaware.

After a couple of hours the rain stopped so we set off again. For some reason CRT are tethering these where the bank has eroded, I am not sure what they are supposed to do. I can’t see them stopping the erosion getting worse and who would try to moor there anyway. As for walkers its not going to stop them stumbling into a hole.

We finally moored up a little after 5 pm. a bit north of Hinckley just before bridge 19. If you look at the map below you will see we are just over 3½ miles from where we started from.

Today’s Journey 12 miles, 1 Junction 2 canals in 4¼ hrs