In less than a week we have managed to travel through 3 counties and 4 canals (good going at a maximum speed of 3mph; got locked into a military firing range on a live firing day (our lockdown 3); and begun preparing for Christmas with permitted flights and foraging .
We left the Ashby Canal, enjoying its gentle meander through undulating, mainly arable farmland and left with a victory – sight of a real live zander. For more about this fearsome fish, predators wiping out native species see previous blog.
The Ashby Canal in Leicestershire was hit by a disaster whilst we were there (see breach blog) so it was with some relief that we moved on. Each canal has its own character, brought about by the industry that spawned it, the land through which it flowed and in part by whatever the boats using it were carrying. Each Canal still maintains its unique character in part born from its geography but also now by its usage. The Ashby Canal for example doesn’t actually go to the exotically named Ashby-de-la-Zouch and never did. It served the coal fields of Moira, taking its high quality coal to warm the students and academics in the Oxford colleges. In time it also carried iron and steel from the Moira Furnace and the barges came in laden with goods for the area. Its gentle contours and lack of locks (until Moira which is not connected now to the main canal) made it popular with commercial fleets and today those very reasons make it popular with leisure boaters too. It is a leisure and holiday canal now.
As we left the Ashby canal at Marston Junction, turning hard right onto the Coventry , we left its milky coffee coloured waters, stained by the run-off from heavy rain seeping through ploughed clay fields, and a mallard paradise. The Ashby is heavily populated by handsome males with their iridescent blue green heads, accompanied by their duller brown spouses. The latter make sure everyone knows they are there, not by their plumage but by their voices – you always knew when a female mallard was seeking attention!
Equally noisy flocks of Canada Geese love the fields around the Ashby and the water park at Market Bosworth, but we only saw two families of swans on the canal. Towards Marston Junction skinny-legged moorhens scuttled across the surface of the canal warning of our arrival with their harsh “krekk krekk” call.
The Coventry Canal (Warwickshire) was a different story – moorhens and mallards remain but not in such numbers and they swim amid plastics and litter around Nuneaton. Our fishing net came handy to hoick out a variety of floating debris from deodorant cans to beer cans, plastic drinks bottles to takeaway cartons.
On the wooded stretches beyond Nuneaton the canal opens to mixed woodland which is clearly the playground of jays. We watched them burying and eating acorns before flying up into the tree tops, disappearing as flashes of bright blue, salmon pink and white searing though the sky.
Foraging has been a delight during the Autumn although because I am still cautious the haul has tended to be reduced to mushrooms (edible) and wood (for the fire). Now as we approach Christmas, I feel the urge to celebrate, to deck the halls… or hulls… Canals are ideal places to find flexible willow withies so easy to bind into wreaths. Ivy with its seedhead stars, and holly with vivid red berries are easily found in hedgerows and a bit of discarded lleylandi dumped by a disgruntled gardener added to the greenery. Some pine cones, sourced and dried earlier in the autumn and given a splash of white to make them stand out produced our 2020 festive wreath – no cost and totally sustainable.
After cruising all week it’s still there, and it is delightful to have it complimented by boaters and walkers alike. Some boats are putting Christmas trees up and lights are appearing in unexpected locations to brighten towpaths and moorings.
Maps appear to indicate a simple route up to the Trent and Mersey from the Ashby involving the Coventry Canal as the intermediary. At Fazeley (Tamworth) with its sensational artwork on the old warehouse buildings, we suddenly found ourselves joining the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal, and stayed on that all the way to just passed Whittington where we rejoined what is called the Coventry Canal (detached)!
There are various stories about what happened to create this peculiar state of affairs but they all involve companies running out of money, others stepping in to build a bit, and then running out of money too. Sounds like certain current transport projects…
The Birmingham and Fazeley (Staffordshire) is very different in character – its 15 existing bridges are named, like Dixon’s Bridge and Bull’s Bridge, whilst the Coventry uses numbers. Having left the Coventry after Bridge 77 we found ourselves picking up the detached section with Bridge 78 miles further on! Both canals though in places have bridges with doors in the side of them. Could these be for Santa’s elves? Or to store no longer needed politicians? Slots cut into the bridge ends below give clues to their more mundane but useful purpose. The door is the entrance to a storage area for stop planks, the wooden planks slotted in to block off a section of canal to drain it for maintenance work or to conserve water in the event of a major leak (as happened on the Ashby in November).
The Coventry Canal and the Birmingham and Fazeley brought the pandemic into stark focus once again. On the Coventry we tackled the Atherstone Flight, a series of 11 locks which took us down 70ft from the lofty heights at the start of the town all the way through, past the ALDI UK headquarters and out into the rural countryside beyond. We need to press on to get to see family at Christmas so we are making early starts which brings utter beauty to each day (as well as the odd frozen rope to contend with!).
The Warwickshire town of Atherstone is famed for its Ball Game “the most brutal game on earth” according to the New Zealand Herald! It takes place every Shrove Tuesday and this year was the 821st event. Snowstorms, foot and mouth, Word Wars have not stopped it, but just this week the Coventry Evening Telegraph reported that the Covid pandemic is threatening the 2021 event.
Further on the Birmingham and Fazeley, the delightful Staffordshire village of Hopwas embraces both sides of the canal, underlining what a difference cruising in this pandemic has meant to boaters like us. The Red Lion and the Tame Otter are on either side of the visitor moorings and in normal days we would have welcomed the opportunity to join their firesides for an hour or two to enjoy a fragrant mulled wine, or a cask ale and given our custom to both out of fairness of course. Both are now lying silent and dark, a 2020 unlike any other. ..
So this year we will remember Hopwas not for its pubs but for its woods. Hopwas Hayes Wood is a stunning 385 acre area of ancient woodland, heaven for walking, running and cycling. We headed into it from the canal where we were greeted with a flagpole and an official Ministry of Defence sign saying that this is the Whittington Firing Range and on a day when a red flag is flying and the gates are locked you shouldn’t enter. We walked through the gates around 8am and there was no flag so we enjoyed a good hour or so walking through the woods.
We started to walk back down the hill towards the canal just before 9am and found ourselves faced with – a red flag… and further on another red flag, and another – the damn things were now proliferating and accompanied by some seriously padlocked gates where we had entered earlier…
Local runners heading along the towpath realised our plight and came to our rescue with details of an alternative route out of the woods which would take us away from the firing zone and back to safely. Needless to say the journey back was done a lot faster and as ever we were delighted to meet local runners!
If you find yourself in this area – do go down to the woods but take a look at the MOD website first – might have saved us being locked in!
What excitement will next week hold?!
Pickingupducks 