Harnser's Travels: Atherstone

Saturday, 7 August 2021

Atherstone

Last night we went to bed at 11pm. to the dulcet sounds of a Clark generator running on the offside bank, thankfully it was ahead of us, then this morning we woke at 4am. to an alarm going off somewhere, I crawled out of bed and went through the boat checking ours and as I opened the front doors to try and hear where it was coming from, it stopped.

George arrived about half 9 and we were away by 10 with a good run up the flight. We met several boats on the way and all locks were with us until lock 5 where somehow we caught up with a hire boat, but after that we were in Volockie territory, so 4 was open ready for us, I turned three and the rest were also ready. I thought there was a boat coming down the top lock but it was just the charity boat, Hargreaves II moored on the lock moorings for a couple of hours. We stopped at the top of the locks to dump rubbish and take on water, while we were there the Hargreaves II winded and then moored up again on the lock moorings, it was a good job it wasn't too busy. Once the tank was full we set off only to moor up about a quarter of the mile down the canal to have lunch passing the tyre boat on the way.

While we were eating lunch the Hargreaves II slid silently passed us with her all electric drive, it must be ideal for the service she provides running for perhaps 3 to 4 hours at a time, even while waiting for her passengers she was recharging. Having finished lunch we set off, a family of swans were sunbathing on the offside slipway,

If I hadn't seen them out swimming I would have said they were unwell, as you can see from the photograph it had started to rain, thankfully it didn't come to much and the umbrella wasn't needed for long.
Passing Rothen's yard they are now stacking their boats and have a couple of ex working boats sitting there, maybe they have bought them in for canal maintenance work.

Passing the allotments at Nuneaton Diana was able to pick our first Blackberries of the season from the off side while I hovered moving slightly back and forth as required.

I expected to see the Hargreaves II moored up at Boot Hill as that is where the original one was kept, but she wasn't there, we would meet her again coming the other way just before the Griff Arm. We carried on south for a bit, on previous trips I had spotted all these beer cans on the ledge of the southerly span of bridge 17, but never managed to get a picture, today I remembered and had the camera ready, still not much room to get the shot.