Sutton Cheney

Today's Canal - Ashby

Another hot day - almost too hot around lunch time which is why we took an extended break! There was a little haziness at first but soon cleared to a bright blue sky with rarely any cloud at all.

If you look back at our blog in 2018 you will see that we described cruising the Ashby as 'plain vanilla' cruising - nothing wrong with that except that it leaves a blog writer a bit bereft of stories to tell! The canal is almost all rural, indeed open countryside, and even when it comes near to one of two or three small towns it is always just to touch at the edge.

We set off at our usual time and passed under the first of over 30 almost identical bridges.

The Trent Valley section of the electrified West Coast Main Line passed over shortly ahead. We see a lot of this line when on the canals in this area, not just from the boat but also it often figures in our Car Shuffle routes.

As you can see from this map in Wikipedia, all of the intermediate stations are important places on a canal.

We had difficulty in updating out photos of the distinctive mile posts as most, unlike the first, were bidden by vegetation growth - the  towpath edges have been allowed to grow without much check - or behind moored boats.

The Big Pit in Hinckley was home to Hudsons Brick Company Ltd and later Hinckley Dye Works. For a long time it has been the home of a fishing club but in recent years locals have fought off various attempts to fill it in to redevelop the land.

As we passed The Barge moorings we only just spotted in time this apparently loose pontoon. However, it did not move very much as we passed so perhaps it is tethered underwater.

We continued a little longer than we might otherwise have done before our lunch stop but Christine was keen to get to Bridge 25 before then. She remembered that the farm shop here (not the one at Bridge 23!) did excellent pork pies as well as sausages - they do other things as well but that was what was wanted today. Mike dropped here at the bridge and then continued to the moorings just beyond where he tied up.. It was  not long before Christine returned with said goodies in hand.

It was almost four o;clock by the time we had eaten, snoozed and generally hid away from too much direct sunshine in the hottest part of the day. When we did bet going once more there was a slight breeze which made our final stretch pof the day much pleasanter.

We wanted to get as far as Sutton Wharf in order to use the full set of facilities - the water point mooring is just to the left of the picture. After completing this we were tempted to seek chilled medication at the specialist boat moored nearby Alas, it had just closed, straight after serving the other  boat on the water point! We just had to be satisfied with chic ices from our own freezer . . .

We continued for a short while to find a good mooring - well, like most on the Ashby it was still shallow and we had the usual water moat as a defence fortification.

And we nearly forgot to relate today's strangest encounter: as we cruised along this morning, coming down the towpath ahead of us was a naked rambler! As he approached he took off his hat (like a gentleman?) and held it rather self-consciously in front of himself. When we said to him not to worry about the hat he quickly whipped it back onto his head and continued on his way.

11.7 Miles - 0 Locks