Hartshill Monday 25 July 2016

Last time we stopped in Polesworth to eat we had a take a way from Maya Indian Takeaway so I checked on the web to see their opening hours only to find that the Food Hygiene guys had fine them £30,000 in April. There is now another Indian Take a way at the same address called Ratna and they have a rating of 4 which is good, funny thing is they have the same telephone number as Maya. The meal was tasty and a little too much for two of us so we went to bed feeling slightly over full.

This morning the boat moored behind us left well before I intended getting up and several passed before we were ready for the off,  We pushed of at quarter to ten and travelled very slowly to Atherstone where there were 5 boats ahead of us. Even though we we only doing 2 mph no one caught us up and I worked out if we had left at 11am we would still have cleared the flight at the same time.

One of the boats on the long term moorings below the locks had a solar water heating set up, something you don’t often see on boats but if you don’t run the engine for electricity then often you don’t have hot water. Strangely I didn’t spot any solar electrical panels on the boat, maybe they were on the bank. A boat we passed later certainly had his fair share of panels on his roof, it was completely covered.  As we waited for our turn at the locks every one ahead of us including us mucked in and helped work the locks, but the hire boat behind us was not so keen to help at first but then did come up to give us a hand. We met a few boats in the flight  but still kept catching the two ahead up in the longer pounds. There is only one lock on this flight that has a working side pond and now CRT has said it mustn’t be used for some reason.

The top three locks had Volockies and at the top lock there was also a meet and greet volunteer who was also lending a hand with the lock. They had a chalk board beside the lock that indicated that 11 boats had been both up and down that lock today. The footbridge across the end of the winding hole is getting a good bashing as people try to wind, Its only just possible to get a 70 foot boat round with the finders lifted because of it. The only need to lift the bridge on a couple of blocks each and and there wouldn’t be a problem as the working boat bows would go underneath it.

Just passed bridge 36 Rothen & Son moor some of their boats, I had not seen one like this there before, the bits sticking out in front are outriggers that swing to the sides to give the boat more width and stability in use, but they hinge round to the front to pass through narrow locks and bridge holes.

We carried on to moor a short way before Hartshill just beyond bridge 33. There were already a lot of boats moored there but a space after the first on, we didn’t go in the middle but gave a reasonable space after the first one. We had been here about an hour when a longish boat came by looking to moor, he thought he would get in ahead of us, but I could see he wouldn’t make it so we drew back about 6 feet.

Today’s Journey6½ miles, 11 locks in 5¾ hours