Ansty Visitor Moorings

This morning I crawled out of bed and it was thick fog, so I crawled back in for a but.
Last night I said we moored just through the turnover bridge, some of you may be wondering why there is a turn over bridge when the towpath continues on the east side of the canal all the way to Coventry. You have to look a few hundred yards north to the old Griff Arm, now disused. The tow path was on the south of the arm and at the junction continued down to the turnover bridge for the horses to join the main towpath to Coventry or Fazeley, as can be seen by this map from Waterway Routes.

We could hear fireworks up until about half ten last night but we couldn’t see any, this was probably due to the giant new warehouse we were moored next to, surprisingly we did get a TV reception but aerial orientation was critical. the building is huge and the earth embankment that it stands on looks to be supported by green sand bags.

We made our way down to Charity Dock and here is a sight not many have ever seen, its the entrance to the dry dock, everyone knows it’s there but few have seen it.

I hoped off the boat in the narrows just before Hawkesbury junction to walk across and set the stop lock ready for Diana as she brought Harnser round the 180° junction turn.
We now left the Coventry Canal and were on the North Oxford Canal.
One of the things we noticed was the number of men out lure fishing  between the junction and Coventry Cruising Club and most of them had what looked like an ID card on a ribbon round their necks. We have often seen the odd one or two fishing like this but not the sort of numbers we saw today.
It was interesting that CRT appear to has cut the reeds along the edge of the towpath along the canal, it must be part of the new vegetation management contract.

We planned to moor at the Ansty Visitor Moorings tonight, I wish we had moored slightly earlier as we ended up mooring in a good rain shower started less than 5 minutes earlier.

Todays Journey

7 miles 1 lock in 2¾ hours.