Dadlington to Snarestone tunnel

Fri 6 Nov
I didn't realise just how noisy it was at Hawkesbury Junction with the continuous background noise from the motorway 24 hrs a day. What a contrast to last night when the only sound was the Water Vole chewing the reeds on the far side of the canal.
I changed the halogen down light in the boatman's cabin to LED's while Diana took Magic for a walk round Dadlington,  when they returned we pushed off just before 10 am. BW are doing quite a bit of dredging  along the canal and they have now got as far as Market Bosworth. I saw a couple more Water Voles in the water as we travelled along, looking at the number of holes in the offside they look quite plentiful. After lunch Diana took over driving while I moved the light fittings from the boatman's cabin to the lounge, the reason behind this is that the new LED's are brighter than the old ones, but I had to modify the light fittings to fit the old style LED's the new ones are a straight replacement. We thought it would be better to have the brighter light in the lounge, hence I had swap the fitting round. We carried on towards the terminus of the Ashby canal, through Snarestone tunnel  and winded just before the very end. Work her to extend the canal is ongoing, there is now a concrete structure to take a set of lock gates and two sets of stop planks. It seems that there is now some doubt as to whether the lock gates are required or not, it was my understanding that there was talk of a full size lock being built and running the new section of canal at a different level to prove nothing was leaking. Once the stop planks are in place they will be able to start excavating the canal. They have already excavated a new channel parallel with the canal from the winding hole to the bridge, this is a wild life haven and is only connected to the canal by a piece of pipe, why it was needed I am not sure, as no wildlife water habitat has been removed and several more miles of water will be opened up.
Diana bought some paper back books from the trusts shop before we headed back through the tunnel to moor for the night on the 48 hr moorings. The plan tonight is to eat in the Globe pub on top of the tunnel and when we walked the dog we went up there to book a table. Another job I did this afternoon was to fit the upgraded water gauge with the LCD readout from MSC. To do this I had to get to the plumbing under the floor just behind the water tank, this meant laying flat out under the bed and then reaching under the floor to where the water feed comes from the tank, we now need to fill the water tank to complete the calibration, a job for tomorrow.