Alvecote Sat 1 March 2014

We woke to a lovely sunny but chilly morning, the first job was to cross the canal to the CaRT offices and fill the water tank, we also took the opportunity to dump our rubbish in the bins provided. The plan was to stop near the bottom of the Atherstone flight but plans change.

The art work on the bare brick wall at the junction looks quite impressive.

There were quite a few boats about today and we even had to wait at the bottom of the Tamworth flight for a boat coming down and he was the third one we had seen. While we were waiting I got chatting to the chap that lives in the lock cottage on the offside, his only access is across the lock walkway so it must have been fun getting all his furniture in. The chap is quite famous for his brick collection, it seams that all the collieries had their own bricks with their names in the frogs, maybe it was to stop them getting pinched?

By now the weather was warming up and I must say the sun did make me feel a lot better.
As you will all know I am not the best speller in the world, but even I was taken with this notice at Canal Crafts.

I don’t normally pick up hitch hikers in the car and definitely not on the boat but today I made an exception.

 

I find it quite interesting as I cruise the system to see how home owners treat the canal at the bottom of their gardens, some turn their backs on the canal and set high conifer hedges or fencing panels, some just leave it as a jungle. Then there is the ones who ignore it and do their garden as if it wasn’t there and others who embrace it and set flowers in the bank or terrace there garden with decking and summer houses and then there are ones like this and we have passed about three this week.

It has been suggested that my “man Flu” may be due to withdrawal symptoms of not visiting a pub, so we put that right today and stopped at The Samuel Barlow at lunch time.

After checking the beer was OK and tickling the dogs in the bar we moved on to Pooley Colliery centre, first we moored on the towing path as Diana wanted to climb the hill. When she returned we decided to moor outside the visitor centre for a look round and partake of a cup of tea. Around 5 pm we we decided to move and actually reversed back along the canal to moor further from the motorway and with the hill between us and the roundabout.