Snarestone

A fine day but still quite chilly when we set off at 1015am. The offside willows at Market Bosworth will so require some attention, the canal is down to one boat width now.Again in the first hour we met 5 boats, 3 of them at bridges. We stopped for a short chat with Derwent 6 who we hadn’t seen for some time, but knew they were this way from their blog.

It is important to stop water getting down the chimney into your stove as the cast iron soon rusts and blows the joints, so people fit purpose made caps but others just use what’s to hand.Lots of the bridges on this canal are in need of some attention, some moor than others, I wonder it the wall was hit by a passing vehicle and if so did they own up to it.The Ashby Canal Association (ACA) have gone to a lot of time and expense installing new “Mile Markers” when they did this they decided to future proof them and stat from the final terminus, unfortunately someone disagrees with them and think it should be from the present terminus so have defaced 3 of them by changing them to 1 2 & 3 painting out the correct number. We stopped just prior to the full size winding hole for lunch before walking the restored section and then the unrestored length as far as the Snarestone Road where the route of the restored canal will leave the original line. The ACA erected so interpretation board on the old route indicating what use to be there, there is also a marker showing the depth of the Ashby coal seams.

We wandered to the ACA shop for ice creams and buy a few bits and bobs before returning to Harnser to reverse the newly restored length. To access the new length you have to pass through Swing bridge 61a which our old friend Mike opened for us, it was then backwards all the way through the new bridge 62 to the terminus, there is a winding hole at the terminus but it is slightly too small for us to get round. Once we had done the photo at the very end we came back under bridge 62 to moor just before the swing bridge over night. It has got very busy here this afternoon with all the visitor moorings taken on the CRT section of canal and 4 of us down here on the ACA section.

Today’s Journey 7.5 miles in 3.5 hours