Today's Canal - Coventry
Christine's Birthday
A bright morning - before setting off Mike walked back to the previous bridge to get a better picture of the Hartshill canal maintenance base.
Alongside the bridge at the other end of the basin there was an information panel. This talks about the nearby industrial landscape and how waste material from the many quarries nearby was simply piled up high. We are invited to look through the arch of the bridge to see a mound about 130 m above sea level (the canal here is about 95) It - jee's - has not been used for around 50 years and has become almost absorbed by nature - so much that many people think that it is natural!
Mancetter Marina has only just opened - when we came this way before the entrance was still just a winding hole and behind was once Stoneleigh Quarry.
The marina has been created by The Rothen Group - generally well known for providing much of the water based equipment to CaRT for operations such as dredging and piling and well as civil engineering expertise. Their main base is nearby.
As we neared the centre of we saw that the land behind another winding hole is being developed as Ruby's Yard. The history of the site can be found on their website but the current project grew out the determination of a local resident to avoid the environmental impact when it was previously operated as a boat yard.
We were wanting to stop and do lour weekend shopping in Atherstone but our normal place is five locks down so we had to work those first. 'Doing Locks' came as a bit of a surprise since we have been on the same level since last Saturday (at Hawkesbury). Even then it was only a stop lock and the last 'real' lock was at Hillmorton! At least on this one we had a volunteer lock keeper to help us through.
At one time each of the 11 locks in
We came down to the mooring spot remarkably easily, with boats coming up just at the right intervals. Almost all of what we wanted we found at the Co-Op although they were out of courgettes so the list was completed across the road at Aldi.
After lunch we continued down the flight - we heard from boaters coming up that there were two or three pounds further down that are very short of water. The pound between 6 and 7 was a bit down but did not present any difficulties.
The fun was at Lock 8 with the level below especially low. As a result when the lock was emptied and the gates opened, the boat was scraping the bottom of the lock, all but sitting on the debris below! It would neither go out of the lock nor even right to the back to start again. Christine opened top paddles gto flush us out and remarkably this worked and gradually Mike managed to inch the boat out, going up and over the bottom cill! The remainder of the flight was comparatively benign. At the bottom lock, water was going over the bywash!
Also at Lock 8 was this small but well kept memorial to Margaret Rose Simmons. We have not yet discovered who she was and why there is a connection with this lock.
After completing the flight we stopped just shortly afterwards at the Grendon Wharf service block. Unlike the taps we nave used lately, this one was very fierce and alas it has damaged (probably beyond repair) our remaining expanding hose - which is so much easier to use. The other we started the season with did not last very long - the XHose we have had for most of our time with this boat, but is now all but impossible to source, cheaper versions have dominated the market. Fortunately we keep our 'old faithful' conventional hose. It works but is much more cumbersome to deploy. Arghh!
Two years ago we came through Pooley Country Park and included in the blog a picture of the iconic pit winding wheel, painted in rainbow colours. In the meantime the vegetation has grown apace and we were hard pushed to see it!
We had been looking up possible churches to go to tomorrow morning - this always was a non-trivial logistic exercise, especially finding somewhere within realistic walking distance. With COVID still having its impact the task is even more complex. We think we have found somewhere but earlier delays meant that we had to stop for the night a little short - there is time in the morning to do the last half hour. We will let you know in the next blog if we succeeded!
8.7 Miles - 11 Locks
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