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.
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| British ferns and a banana plant |
We have seen a lot of second broods of moorhen – these obligingly posed for me
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| 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
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