The End of the Line (or The Canal)!

Monday 30th September, 2013 
We passed the day very agreeably cruising up to the canal's current limit of navigation at Snarestone. Given the positive progress made by the restoration group, it may be that the next time we pass this way, we might be able to go a bit further! The original end of the canal is some eight miles ahead. The last mile and a half is already in water and navigable - it's just that there is a six mile gap in the middle!

At the terminus we turned, took on water and had lunch, after which we walked up to the very end of the canal and found a large hole, which will one day be more canal. The old canal was mostly in-filled with mining slag.

Next to the terminus is an old pumping station that used to supply water to local towns but is now residential housing. It was a lovely old building and it looked like some of the machinery was still inside the main pump-house; we could certainly make out the curve of a big wheel through the window on the right.

Outside, next to the office at the terminus, were two massive steel beams from an old beam engine, together with the four bearings on which the beams would be mounted - all beautifully restored.

One wonders if there are plans to renovate the pumping station? Unfortunately there was no-one around to ask.
Just south of the terminus is Snarestone Tunnel, about 250 yards long and with a distinct kink in the middle!

When we started back down the canal, M decided to walk the short distance to the tunnel and then to walk what should also have been the short distance over the top but the path was circuitous and not clearly signed. At one point it went through someone's back garden and under their washing line! So she played safe and took the alternative route through the pub car park!

R moored MM up just outside the tunnel mouth and we both walked into the village, which was timelessly undeveloped. It had no shop, just an old fashioned Primary School and a scattering of lovely houses - some quite grand.
The countryside around here is very agricultural with large fields of corn and maize. This old tree stood rather defiantly alone in the evening sun, surrounded by maize as far as the eye could see.

Our overnight mooring was a few miles further south  close to the hamlet of Congerstone. A very quiet spot, but then isn't everywhere on the Ashby? A little to the east is a village that rejoices in the name of Barton-in-the-Beans! What sort of beans, one wonders? The mind boggles....
Today: 13 miles,0 locks and 6.1 hurs.
Trip: 460 miles, 327 locks and 386.4 hours.

Two Kings, One Day!

Sunday 29th September, 2013 at Bosworth Battlefield Site.
Much has been said recently about the life and death of Richard III since the discovery of his remains in Leicester in 2011, and we have been following it closely. It is something in which R had an interest previously and neither of us believed the Tudor propaganda that for 500 years had vilified Richard and blackened his reputation.There is a large and very impressive Visitor Centre here at Bosworth. It was built next to the hill where the battle was previously thought to have taken place - however, research in the last few years has identified the actual battlefield as being a mile or so to the south-west on, what is now, a private working farm.
The motto of the Visitor Centre is "Two Kings, One Day" and the walk to get there passes Shenton Station at one end of the Battlefield Line heritage railway. As we walked there, we heard, and then saw, a steam train arriving.

We hurried to buy tickets but then discovered that this was a "test" train and so not for public use. The first available train was over an hour later.  Therefore, we decided to go to the Battlefield Visitor Centre first and then come back to the railway later. As we approached the centre, the first thing that we saw was the striking memorial to the battle. In the centre was a sundial formed of a halbard, holding aloft a crown.

The sundial was surrounded by three sections. To the east was a "throne" for Richard III, accompanied by bushes of white roses (for the House of York). On the 22nd August 1485, Richard's army comprised about 10,000 men, including about 1,000 archers.

To the west was a "throne" for Henry Tudor, surrounded by bushes of red roses (for Lancashire). His army was only about 5,000 strong, many of whom were convicts released from French jails.

To the south was a third, smaller "chair" for Lord Stanley surrounded by yellow roses (the colour of his Standard).  He was knowh to have divided loyalties and a reputation for waiting to see who was going to win before committing himself. He and his son commanded two smaller armies totalling some 5,000 men. In the end, Lord Stanley actually did nothing, but the intervention at the last minute of his son, who had also been waiting with his army on the sidelines, was decisive.

Incredible that a battle that lasted only one and a half hours can have changed so much of history.

It is clear, even from Tudor reports, that Richard fought bravely. He personally came very close to killing Henry, even managing to kill Henry's standard bearer, but finally Richard's attempt to end the battle quickly by killing Henry backfired and it was Richard himself who was killed. The rest is history.
The actual battlefield is about a mile away on the other side of the trees, framed by Richard's Standard in the photo below.

At the centre, we signed up for a guided walk. The lady guide provided us with our own "Standards" and M felt greatly honoured to carry Richard's Standard, particularly when she realised from the colours that he must have been a Crystal Palace supporter!

The guide was very informative and comprehensive although a bit disjointed in her presentation.

After the walk, we had lunch in the Tithe Barn Cafe. It was a fascinating building as it was a modern construction built over and around the original oak frame of the tithe barn. So, although it looked like a real tithe barn, the original woodwork was actually free-standing inside it.

The exhibition at the centre was very well done with many exhibits illustrating the people and times of the battle as well as the timeframe of events and troop movements on the day. There was also a section devoted to the more recent discoveries of Richard's remains and of the actual site of the battlefield. It is heartening to know that the recent publicity has led to a re-appraisal of Richard, this was clearly illustrated on our walk by the cheers with which Richard's Standard was greeted and the loud "BOOOs" when Henry's Standard was produced!
The stone commemorating the "place" where Richard was killed has been moved into the forecourt of the Visitor Centre as it is now clear that it had been situated in the wrong place!

The afternoon was spent playing trains. The Battlefield Heritage Railway runs for 5 miles from Shenton (where we started) to Shackerston and we caught the last round trip of the afternoon. M would happily have spent the whole day going up and down the line in the old carriages behind the splendid (unnamed) steam locomotive No. 3803!

When we returned to MM in the early evening, our neighbours told us that someone had gone past so quickly that our mooring pins had been pulled out. Fortunately, the people who did it were decent enough to stop and re-set the pins so that MM was safe and sound - but 30 yards further down the canal!
Today: No movement.

On The Ashby Canal.

Saturday 28th September at the Bosworth Battlefield Site.
We awoke to a beautiful autumn morning and, after breakfast, walked into Nuneaton town. We were so glad that we had taken the trouble; the town which looked cheerless and rather run down last night had sprung to life. People thronged the busy streets and the market lived up to its reputation. We bought fruit, vegetables and farm eggs from market stalls; the quality and the price of which were excellent!

In the shopping centre, we stopped to watch a display by a local dance troupe who were very good indeed. They were surrounded by a large crowd who were clapping in time to the music and applauding each group enthusiastically.

M went to buy a "few bits" at the Co-op (no M&S in Nuneaton!) while R took himself off for a
Costa coffee in order to gird his loins for the task of carrying the "few bits" back to MM.
Back on board, we set off for Marston Junction just a couple of miles away. On the way we met three swans having a serious arguement. One of them started by flying straight at the other two.

There followed lots of posturing, with their wings up and their heads kept low. A few yards away, a full-grown cygnet was keeping well out of the way! They followed us for several hundred yards, with the two males at the back weaving back and forth just inches away from each other. Interestingly, although it was all very aggressive posturing, they never actually touched.

At the junction, we turned on to the Ashby Canal which used to serve the coalfields of Moira.

The canal is still is navigable for 21 miles and there is a very active Restoration group working to open the last eight miles to Moira.
It was a lovely journey. The Ashby is a lock-free contour canal that meanders through peaceful rolling farmland, in many ways reminiscent of the South Oxford.
We moored for the night by Shenton aqueduct, very close to the site of the Battle of Bosworth Field where Richard III was killed in 1485. This is the aqueduct from the canal:

And this is what it looks like from the road (you would never guess there was a canal there!):

There is also the Battlefield Heritage Railway here and the plan is to visit both the battlefield and the railway tomorrow.

Before dinner, we walked up to the Heritage Railway Station to take a look.

Today: 15 miles, 0 locks and 6.9 hours.
Trip: 447 miles, 327 locks and 380.3 hours.

M Goes Home Overnight.

Thursday 26th and Friday 27th September, 2013 to Nuneaton.
M has to go home today for a dental appointment. It may seem a long way to go for the dentist but the hygienist at her practice books up six months ahead, so cancelling it is not really an option.
R walked to Atherstone Station with M and, after waving her off on the train, went to console himself (or celebrate!) at Costa!
As we very much want to do the Ashby Canal and the end of the season draws ever closer, we decided that R would take MM down to Nuneaton to pick up M when she returns tomorrow evening. This will "buy" us an extra day and that, together with a "Cunning Plan" hatched by R, should mean we can do all the things that we want to without having to rush to get back to Aston Marina for the winter (we hope!).
M had taken her camera with her, so R was a bit stuck when he saw a solitary relic of the old telephone network. So he stopped MM and got out his phone!

R moored for the night just outside Nuneaton and then in the morning sailed into the middle of the town expecting it to be urban and noisy - but again, the canals are a secret world and he found a very quiet mooring just a few hundred yards from the main road into the centre of town.

At 6:00pm, R walked into the centre of town to meet M at the station. Her train had been packed, "standing roon only" all the way from Euston, but luckily she was one of the first ones to board and so had a seat. We walked back through the town together. Even in this urban environment there was a lovely sunset.

The town had a mixture of architectural styles but looked more than a little run down. Tomorrow, we plan to come in to do some shopping; the town has the reputation for having a very good street market. We will see!
Two Days: 5 miles, 0 Locks and 10.3 hours.
Trip: 432 miles, 327 locks and 373.4 hours

Atherstone, a Charming Georgian Town.

Wednesday 25th September, 2013 in Atherstone.
A cloudy morning gave way to a warm, rather humid afternoon. As we set off towards Atherstone, we caught a glimpse of the gold monolith on top of its green "pyramid". It certainly looks incongruous in the Warwickshire countyside. Its shape is supposed to be beech leaves stacked one on top of the other, but you could only see that if you were standing above it. Perhaps its Warwickshire's answer to the Nazca Lines - it can only be appreciated by the gods above?

Eleven locks took us up into the centre of Atherstone. It is an attractive flight of locks with interesting side ponds, which are no longer used and there are no plans to bring them back into use. Their sides are quite high, so in one of them, someone had provided a ramp for ducklings and baby moorhens to be able to get out.

Despite the fact that they will never be used again, the Canal and River Trust is spending money to clear them - obviously this is more important than spending money to fix leaking lock gates! They were all full of weeds:

But now they are being cleared. Not sure that they didn't look nicer full of weeds!

On the way, we passed two more Kingsground boats. Nb "Ataraxia" was KG's fifth ever build, so certainly the oldest one that we have seen thus far. Still looking good, though!

Shortly after, as M was helping a couple going the other way through the lock, she saw that theirs too was a KG boat, none other than "Reflections", which we had seen for sale in Braunston Marina in June. They had bought her a week previously and were taking her home. They said they were thrilled with her and were even more so when M described KG's proud history of boatbuilding and how highly KG boats are valued. They went off beaming! How nice!
Our late afternoon walk was a stroll around Atherstone. Again, how glad we were that we'd made the effort. What a gem of a small Georgian town with its wealth of charming old buildings and a delightful cobbled market square by the church with its unusual octagonal tower.

The town used to be a centre of felt hat making, although now there are no hatters left except in the names of streets and pubs.  Curiously, the abolition of slavery in the sugar plantations caused a massive decline in the industry; previously supplying felt hats to the workers in the plantations had been a major source of business.  However, the industry managed to carry on until only recently.
One lesson that we have learnt along our travels is that there is not only a wealth of discoveries to be made along the waterways, there is also so much of interest just a short walk away.
Today: 6 miles, 11 locks and 4.8 hours.
Trip: 427 miles, 327 locks and 363.1 hours.

An Unexpected Find on Top of a Spoil Heap!

Tuesday 24th September, 2013 in Alvecote.
A cloudy day with a hint of watery sunshine. We set off late, but no matter, we don't have a deadline to meet. We passed right under a beautiful willow tree that formed an arch over the canal and mirrored the bridge beyond it.

Just before Fazeley Junction is Peel's Wharf and we stopped to take on water. The chocolate boat from the Heritage Gathering at the weekend was just leaving the water point as we arrived. The small section on the bow is where they make the chocolate. We ate all the chocolates long ago!

Fazeley Junction is where the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal branches off towards Birmingham, but we will continue along the Coventry Canal. It is an attractive junction, with its old mill building and the usual signposts.

We moored up a little further along and walked the half mile into Tamworth where there was an M&S for M:

And, opposite, a Costa Coffee for R - who then helped to carry back the "few bits" that M had bought in M&S. That's R, in the photo below, making a bee-line for Costa!

Lunch consisted of biscuits and some of the wonderful cheeses that we had bought at the Heritage Gathering. Delicious!

We cruised on towards Alvecote where we moored up next to the ruins of Alvecote Priory, a Benedictine Priory that was destroyed in the Reformation. We walked along the towpath to the site of the Priory, very little of which remains - but it was quite atmospheric in the evening sunshine.

On the way back, we found that we had moored up next to the Pooley Field nature reserve on the site of an old colliery, so we followed the path through it on what proved to be a delightful walk. The nature reserve is now densely wooded, mainly with beech and birch trees, and has several large lakes formed from mining subsidence. At the far end of the reserve there was an old spoil heap, also now densely covered in trees. The spoil heap must be about three hundred feet high, so we toiled up to the top and were rewarded with splendid views in all directions (unfortunately including the M42). 

To our astonishment, there was a very strange monument right at the top. It was erected in 2011 and is in the form of a stack of beech leaves made of aluminium and painted gold. It looked lovely in the rays of the setting sun.  There was no plaque to indicate its purpose.  It really is surprising what one comes across unexpectedly! That's R at the bottom looking up it in awe!

Today: 6 miles, 2 locks and 3.0 hours (plus 4.7 hours yesterday).
Trip: 421 miles, 316 locks and 358.3 hours.

The Search for Hopwas

Monday 23rd September, 2013 at Hopwas.
After a busy weekend, we decided to have a quiet day. R did some routine maintenance in the engine compartment, while M happily busied herself being domestic.
Later, we walked the half mile back to Hopwas, but didn't see many hops! There were a few trailing along the top of the hedges, but that was it. We did, however, see trees laden with fruit and berries.

We talked before about a special year, when all the trees and bushes seem to contrive with the weather system to produce bumper crops - and this year is certainly proving itself to be one of those years. We have seen so many trees almost overwhelmed with fruit or berries; sloes, damsons, crab-apples, acorns, hazelnuts. Truly a "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness" this year.
When we reached Hopwas, we saw the two pubs on either side of the canal that we passed yesterday; The Red Lion on one side and the Tame Otter on the other - the latter a bit of a pun as the River Tame runs by the village, so is it a Tame otter or a tame otter?

According to the guide books, the village has a post office and a store - but we walked the length of the village (and would have walked the breadth if it had had one) and found neither. We did find a very unusual church, built around 1880 and paid for by public subscription; they couldn't afford stone, so they built the bottom half of brick and the top half timber framed. It actually makes a very pleasant building, very "Arts and Crafts" in style.

Returning to MM, we found that a boat moored a hundred yards away had pulled out its mooring pins and was stuck broadside across the canal just as two boats were approaching to go past. R had to get a rope from MM and then walk along the boat's gunnel, while M grabbed the other end of the rope and pulled the boat to the bank so that the other boats could pass by. Then R re-set the pins. Later the owner appeared and was suitably grateful (in a very inebriated fashion!).
In the evening, we watched an episode of Inspector Morse called "The Wench is Dead". The story is based upon a real murder that happened on a canal barge in 1839 at Rugely. A few days ago, we passed the place where the body was found in the canal. Although the conclusion of the story was fiction (complete with typical Colin Dexter twists), the circumstances and basic chain of events was very close to what actually happened. Best of all, the re-creation of the nineteenth century barge traffic, people's lives and surroundings was brilliant. The historic scenes were not filmed in black and white, but they might as well have been as everything was grey, smoky and dirty - very evocative!
Today: No movement.

Huddlesford Heritage Gathering

Saturday 21st and Sunday 22nd September, 2013 at Huddlesford Junction.
On Saturday, we awoke to a grey, cloudy morning which later gave way to a warm, sunny afternoon.
After breakfast, we walked down the towpath and across the junction bridge to the "showground". Entry was a modest £3 which covers us for the weekend. The gathering is organised by the Lichfield and Hatherton Canal Restoration Trust and all proceeds go towards restoring the canal, one end of which is at this junction. The Lichfield Canal originally joined the Coventry Canal to the Birmingham Navigations, but it was closed in 1954. Good progress has been made on the restoration but completion is still a long way off.
It was cheering to see a large turnout, certainly the sunshine helped to swell the numbers.

Soon after arriving, we spotted Terry Robertson, with whom we did our Helmsman's Course five years ago. How lovely to see him again after all this time! He hadn't changed, and now that R has grown a beard, there is a definite similarity in a rather nautical way! Two "Sea Dogs" together!

Terry smiled when we teased him about being to blame for setting us off on this narrowboating life. For the first time, we met Pat, his good lady; it was so nice to meet her at last. Pat has been involved with organising the moorings for this event, much as she was involved in organising the moorings for the Olympics last year. Her own boat nb "Quercus" was one of the forty selected to take part in the Queen's Jubilee Flotilla, also last year.
We had a super time looking round the stalls.  Naturally, we bought a supply of home-made cakes! There were real gypsy caravans, there was a hilarious puppet show and a dog "gymkhana" (much barking and running over an obstacle course), as well as a fascinating collection of birds of prey from the smallest:

To the largest:

On one side of the showground there was a large and impressive collection of classic cars, from Model Ts to a huge bright red Lincoln Continental and a wonderful "Woodie".

Without question, our favourite was a beautifully restored Alvis.  How Barry would have loved it.

As this year is the 25th anniversary of the Canal Restoration Trust, there was a cake cutting ceremony with the "Bower Queen" and the Sheriff of Lichfield.

Talking to him later, he told us that one of his duties as Sheriff is to ride the bounds of his territory each year on horseback with eighty followers, also on horseback. He did reveal that he removes his 18 carat gold chain of office and puts it into his pocket when riding, in case it should fall off!
We even had a go at bell-ringing in the mobile carillon! Not as easy as it looks!

It was a joy to see so many colourful working narrowboats and so many people in traditional narrowboating dress. Even the drivers of passing Virgin Express trains entered into the spirit of the occasion with a blast on their horns as they went past. The main line of the canal was very congested with so many old boats!

On Saturday evening, back on MM, we watched a recording of the "Last Night of the Proms" from earlier this month. If you haven't seen Nigel Kennedy playing Monti's Csárdás, it is ten minutes of sheer delight, humour and fun. NK at The Last Night of the Proms. Marin Alsop, as the first ever woman to conduct the Last Night, did a brilliant job and it was a delight to see how much fun she, the orchestra, Nigel and the audience, were all having.  By contrast, the entertainment at the show was slightly less highbrow, but fun nonetheless, including a very large ukulele band and the Bojangles dance school.

We managed to get away without buying too much, although we did weaken at the cheese boat selling delicious Welsh cheeses. We bought some smoked cheese, cheese with ginger and one with leek and white wine. We opened the first two for lunch on Sunday and they were delicious!

On Sunday afternoon, we decided to move on to get ahead of the "rush" (if indeed, it is possible to rush at 3mph!). With difficulty, we threaded our way through the moored boats without touching any of them (just)!

Just north of Whittington Bridge, the Birmingham & Fazeley Canal officially becomes the Coventry Canal and the seamless "join" is defined by a small stone marker.

It was a lovely cruise in the afternoon sun.  We moored up just south of the pretty village of Hopwas and were treated to a magnificent sunset as we had dinner.

The sunset was followed by a bright, and very rosy, moonrise in a starry sky. A lovely end to a very enjoyable weekend.
Today: 5 miles, 0 Locks and 10.5 hours over the weekend.
Trip: 415 miles, 314 Locks and 350.6 hours.