Today has been a lovely day after all yesterday’s rain and we have travelled 7.5 miles from Hawkesbury, on to the Ashby Canal and are moored near Burbage. This is our 3rd attempt to do this canal.
The first time we were going to do it was when we did the Leicester Ring, our first trip after moving on to the boat in 2009. However, we heard tales about how shallow a canal it was and decided as we were relatively new to narrow boating we didn’t want to get stuck up here and make twats of ourselves so we gave it a miss.
The next time we actually started it and got to Bridge 5 where we moored up after travelling 6.5 miles in freezing conditions from Hartshill and the forecast was terrible. This was in March 2013, we stayed there 3 days during which there was about 6 inches of snow! We were relatively sheltered where we were but the canal becomes more rural and open so we asked a chap moored there, who had just been for a walk with his dog, what it was like further down. He said it was a lot worse and told us where we could turn round without going all the way to the next official winding hole which was some miles away. So the next day we turned round and left.
This time we are hopeful of completing the task because there has been quite a lot of rain recently (in fact it is raining as I type) so shallowness shouldn’t be a problem and although it has been known in May, we are thinking there won’t be 6 inches of snow this week!
After mooring up today we walked about a mile to Nutts Bridge and found a garage for a paper. Then we visited The Wharf Inn which was ok except for the infestation of greenfly in the garden! After one pint we decided to go back to The Lime Kilns Inn which, by the time we got there, was heaving. Well, the garden was but there were very few people inside, except for those queueing at the bar – down the stairs and out the door!
We got served eventually and were glad we weren’t having lunch as the waiting time for food was about an hour at that time.
This evening Ken has been doing his first bit of fishing for ages and has caught a couple thus far.
We were hoping to move to Market Bosworth tomorrow however, there is rain and gale force winds forecast for tomorrow and Wednesday so ……………… watch this space!
