An interesting craft

Sunday 24^th July; near Burton Hastings to Hartshill

It’s a lovely spot where we moored last night, and although there was a party or gig going on nearby, and we could hear the motorway in the distance, it didn’t stop us getting to sleep.  We pottered off about 9.30, only seeing a couple of boats till we reached Marston Junction.  We have found that there was little moving traffic on the Ashby, but a of boats moored up along the towpath, at least on the bit we travelled.  RCR’s remote fixing of the loose connection yesterday not only solved the non-starting problem, it cured the intermittent ticking sound when the rev counter stopped working, the rev counter now works consistently, and also cured the problem where the engine wouldn’t stop and Dave had to use the lever thing by the stop solenoid on the engine to stop it.

The bow thruster made the turn onto the Coventry easy in the strong wind!  No calling it the cissy button for us, we are total converts!  We were soon cruising through Nuneaton, the land of allotments.  Some are definitely more cared-for than others, but I do like to see how other gardeners are doing.

The locals round here don’t seem to feed their friends very well – they just park them in the garden and forget about them.

Other gardens have exotica alongside the natives.

British ferns and a banana plant

We have seen a lot of second broods of moorhen – these obligingly posed for me

Peeping fluffies

And then something quite startling – had a car been driven off the towpath?  We couldn’t quite make out what a child on the towpath had shouted

Not a sunken car – it’s a boat! And that is the proud owner on the towpath, clearly as pleased as Punch. 

And then the boring back fences and hedges along the towpath were transformed by an alpine vist.  I'm not entirely sure I'd like to wake up to that on my boat!

Now we were moving out into the countryside at last.  We had been wondering whether to moor by the garlic woods just past Springwood Haven, but there was no room!  The photo below is of the last two boats in a long line of 12 or 14 boats, clearly liveaboards with many cluttered roofs and several very much a work in progress.

It looks like a community moving more or less together.  I wonder where we will find them on our way back next week?  (We'll find out tomorrow - I am so behind with the blog that I am posting this several days later from Harthsill on our way back).  We weren’t sure how popular the Hartshill moorings would be, so we stopped a few hundred yards before the pub.  You can see in the photo how desperately dry the ground is now.

We took Meg and strolled up to the footpath leading down to the railway, Meg leading the way – it is years since we‘ve been here, but she seemed to remember exactly where to go.  It's one of her top ten canal walks.

We didn’t do the full walk, which comes back to the towpath at Springwood Haven – too far for Dave’s dodgy foot – so we went to the pub instead for a refreshing pint.  The old railway bridge had some interesting graffiti – a monarchist maybe, or perhaps the wielder of the spray can couldn’t quite decide what to write?

There would have been plenty of space for us to moor closer to the pub, but we rather liked it further out.  Maybe there will be less noise from the quarry when they start work in the morning.  During the evening there was a noise as of a speeding RIB - but no, it was the car-boat passing rather sedately on his way home.

8-ish miles

 

RCR to the rescue

 Saturday 23^rd July; Sutton Cheney Wharf to Burton Hastings area.

It was dry and quite sunny first thing, and after breakfast Meg and I enjoyed a walk up to the woods while Dave finished off the port side with Carnauba wax, having had to wash it again last night.  I gave him a hand when we got back and it looks great!  Photo later when I get around to taking one. 

We were ready to leave about 10, but the engine wouldn’t start!  There were no lights on the control panel, as though the starter battery was dead, or isolated.  He tested all the battery circuits etc with the multimeter, and they were fine, just as the battery monitor said.  He was fairly sure the problem was connected with the erratic performance of the rev counter, and the odd ticking sound that occasionally occurred.  He called RCR, and then got on with other bits and pieces till the engineer phoned.  Magic! Dave described the problem, said what he had tested and observed, and the engineer said it was either the 40-amp fuse had blown, or the multi-plug had vibrated loose – both well-known issues with Beta 43 engines, which are new to us - Chuffed had a Yanmar Barrus-Shire.  Dave looked where he said and immediately the solution was clear – few of the pins in the multi-plug were connecting.  He pushed the two parts back together, turned the key and the beeps sounded – success!  Not only did the phone call save the engineer a drive out, but we saved the £15 call-out which RCR have had to introduce because of the fuel price increases.

We had lunch and left about 1, passing the wharf cafe, which was extremely busy on a Saturday lunchtime as you might expect, and waved at our neighbours who had arrived this morning for lunch with family. 

We wended our gentle way towards Stoke Golding, past the peaceful field which looks as though it won’t stay that way for long.

Then past the marina we left a couple of days ago.

And on towards Marston Junction.  We stopped just past Trinity where I popped up to the garage for the Saturday paper, but it was too late for our preferred title,  A little further on, were positioned correctly for a bend when suddenly an apparition appeared in the middle of the navigation making straight for us! Dave had to slam into reverse to avoid an accident as the giant paddleboard, with 6 young people and one adult aboard, crossed over in front of us to the towpath side where they held onto the bank.  Close behind was another, but they were already taking evasive action.  It didn’t seem right to take a face-on photo of young people, so here they are from the back.  They were definitely having fun!

Too foreshortened to see the seven young people on the board!

Back out into the countryside and there seemed to be a combine harvester hard at work. I tried to get an arty shot of the tractor and grain trailer on the horizon through the bridge-hole, but was a bit too late. 

It turned out not to be harvesting wheat or barley, but we thought probably rapeseed.  The rotating cutter device is held off the ground, as rapeseed is held atop tall stalks.  The harvester seemed to be chopping the stalks up finely and dropping the bits back onto the ground, as presumably it’s not fit for animal feed or bedding so is not baled up but incorprated back into the soil. 

This was all happening close to the land of the baby pylons, where the grown-ups appear to have the high-voltage cables tied on with a pretty bow.

We moored soon after 5, on a nice bit of Armco a little way past Burton Hastings.   There are not many boats on the move, but a lot moored along the towpath.  We were joined later by one boat, and another passed by while we were eating, but that was it.  Yet another evening with no signal though, so I am still waiting to post the first blog of this trip.

8½ miles

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Toilet talk

Friday 22^nd July; Sutton Cheney Wharf to Bosworth and return

Maybe we had been naïve to expect Bonjour to have had a pump-out when it went on brokerage, but it had become obvious that it hadn’t.  Rather annoying, but it wouldn’t be boating without an occasional toilet issue, would it? There is a perfectly sized bucket in the galley which was pressed into service for overnight use.  We slept with the doors open for extra ventilation as it had got quite pongy by bedtime.  When I decided to use the CRT facilities once it had got light I discovered it had been raining so things were a bit wet.  But the facilities had just been cleaned and were a pleasure to use – including the elsan hose to rinse the bucket round.  We weren’t up late, and after Meg had had a disappointingly short walk up to the woods we were off towards the pump-out at Bosworth marina.  There was a lot of very shallow canal and we made very slow progress, enlivened by an unusual bather.

Wooo  it's cold!

And the second one of these we have seen.  Is it some sort of wind generator?

The service wharf at Bosworth marina is well placed, quite close to the entrance with enough space to manoeuvre and use it easily.  We’ve never done a self-pump-out before – when you have a share-boat or a hire-boat, someone else is paid to do it for you.  So we had a lightning-quick lesson and were left to get on with it.  It turned out to be quite straightforward and the toilet now seems to be back to normal – for the time being at least.  We moored just outside the marina for lunch, and then I slogged up the hill to Market Bosworth.  Sadly there are no buses now …

I bought a couple of things and called in at the Pharmacy for advice – I have a really nasty cough which definitely isn’t Covid, nor hay fever which the pharmacist diagnosed.  But if the cough mixture she said was all I needed for a decent night’s sleep, we will both be very pleased!

On the way back I saw this remarkable hedge.  I thought there were two tortoises and a twiddly bit like a gargoyle, but the owner says he just tries to make an interesting shape.  A local teacher thinks it’s a dragon.

And just across the road was another point of interest 

 

When I got back, we cruised along to the next winding hole and turned.  The boat seems a lot lighter in the water with an empty poo tank, but we still struggled to turn – a supposedly full-length winding hole seemed to be only just over 60 ft.  The stretch of canal we found very difficult this morning, as regards the bottom being too close to the top, was still very shallow, but Bonjour coped better with the rest on the way back.  We moored in the same place as last night, on the visitor mooring at Sutton Cheney Wharf.

Then the same thing happened as on our last trip – the engine would not switch off, so once more Dave had to lift the engine board and do it manually.

8¾ miles, a pump-out, and a nasty niff gone.

Back again!

Thursday July 21^st; Willow Park marina to Sutton Cheney Wharf

We had a straightforward journey back up to the boat, although the traffic was heavy at times, and arrived at the marina shortly after 2.  This is a great little marina, with good rates for visitor mooring, and very accommodating.  Bonjour only had 4 anodes, which the surveyor noted were 85% worn – but the boat was blacked not long ago, so why on earth they weren’t changed when the boat was going on brokerage, who knows?  4 is apparently not enough for a 60’ boat anyway, so they fitted 4 new ones for us while we were at home. 

It must have been after 4 when we left the marina, and turned left towards the terminus although we weren’t certain we would go that far.  We ran aground in the first 5 minutes – an oncoming hire-boat was passing some moored boats and we just drifted into the mud on the offside.  It was very slow going the whole time – pointless trying to go faster in this canal.  Perhaps we shouldn’t have topped up the water tank!  Pretty canal though.

There are some imaginative arrangements on boat roofs around here ....

Coffin, boat or roof box? Note the scythe pretending to be an oar

As we neared Sutton Cheney Wharf, we saw what could have been smoke drifting across the water – but it wasn’t.  There was a tractor going up and down a field where the grain had been harvested, and looked to be pulling a disc cultivator, if there is such a thing.  The ground is so dry that the tractor was creating a plume of dust behind it.

There's a tractor there somewhere

We tried to moor before we got to Sutton Cheney Wharf, as we weren’t sure the pontoon mooring was back in operation, but couldn’t get the stern in closer than 6’.  We went on under the bridge, where we were delighted to see plenty of space on the visitor mooring a little further on from the café.  It was quite difficult to manoeuvre across, as there was shallow water just before it, but we were soon tied up.  It didn’t take us long to decide to try the evening fare at the café (thanks for mentioning it in your blog Neil (NB Herbie). It was very pleasant eating delicious ‘small plates’ by the canal.  And it left us plenty of time to take Meg for a cool evening walk through Ambion Woods to the Bosworth Battlefield Centre.  The Centre itself was closed by now, but there are plenty of paths that remain open, including to the sundial which we remembered from our last visit.

Crown on the sundial's gnomon

Richard III's badge

There were 2 large clearings in the woods, presumably logged, and a lot of replanting had taken place – I squinted down the tree guards and saw a mix of very small trees tucked inside.  Oak, birch and hazel were more or less surviving.  But all the baby Scots Pines I saw looked dried up and dead.  I do hope the rest survive until there is a good drenching of rain.

 

Back at the boat we realised we have a problem with the toilet.  When we first came on board a few weeks ago, there was a dirty tidemark around the inside of the bowl, which was easy enough to clean - a bit of a puzzle, but it seemed to be working fine for that first week.  But when we got back today, the bowl was half full of some very dirty water.  There was no light to say the tank was full, but there was no smell, although we did think a pump-out would be advisable!  (no such facilities at the marina).  It seemed to be working fine after that, till we got back from our walk this evening – now it’s half full again, and a bit niffy too.  It was clear something is up – was the tank full?  No warning light,which we had been told was installed.  Perhaps a seal had failed, which meant a call-out for an engineer.  We clearly wouldn’t be able to use the loo tonight, but luckily there are outside toilets back at the café.

2 slow miles, a battlefield walk and a bit of a loo issue ….