A year ago as the second lockdown loomed in England in the face of the Covid pandemic, we were on the idyllic 22 lock-free miles of the Ashby Canal for the first time.
Our intention was to sit out the lockdown in a Marina, namely the Bosworth Marina, and then make our way to the current end of the still being-restored canal to at least let us say we had ‘completed’ the distance of a whole canal.
Just days before that lockdown was due to lift on 2 December disaster struck. On Sunday 27 November the Ashby was the subject of a breach.
Hundreds of thousands of gallons of water and the fish who lived in them poured out of a collapsed culvert flooding fields. A rescue mission was launched and stop-planks were installed rapidly, shutting off the canal and stemming the flow by lunchtime. In the marina stop-planks were installed shutting us all in to stop water being sucked out which would have led to the many narrowboats inside being marooned in the same way as those up near the breach.
Once the canal was stabilised and lockdown lifted we could move, but we headed out of the Ashby with alacrity rather than approaching the breach, feeling it safer to flee to the Trent and Mersey (where we then got locked in during lockdown 3 for three and a half months!). So we never did make it from one end of the Ashby Canal to the other, and it took until May this year for that stretch of the canal to be rewatered.
Almost a year later, after hundreds of miles and hundreds of locks taking us north into Yorkshire and south to London, we have returned to finish what we started.
We turned onto the Ashby from the Coventry Canal early last misty Sunday morning. Steadily, with a stop for lunch en route, we found our way like homing birds back to a mooring spot near Stoke Golding which we had found blissfully quiet last year before the lockdown started on 5 November. Last year of course, the world had shrunk. People were staying home, travel was local or non existent. Dogs enjoyed being home with their owners, and holidays were on hold.
We found the mooring peaceful and idyllic in its tranquility. This year we moored up within a few hundred feet of our original location, behind a couple of boats, one of which we had seen here last year. Across the canal the same ponies grazed in the same field, and the same Canada geese took off in their V formations at dusk to fly to their nighttime nests, and return at dawn. But that was where the similarities ended. The peace and quiet was as distant a memory as a lockdown. People are now taking holidays, and not all with their pets.
Over the bushes from our mooring it appeared the farm buildings we could see were dog kennels, and we can attest that several of their canine guests may well be returning to their owners a little hoarse! Just one example of how the world has changed in this past year!
We moved first thing Monday morning to another mooring – designated visitor mooring at Sutton Cheney Wharf which had been out of commission last year. The intervening space has been well used by someone – whether the Ashby Canal Association or CRT I know not.
The moorings now enjoy a smart recycled pontoon with mooring rings, located just a couple of hundred yards from all services including hot, spotless showers (spa day time) and a fantastic cafe/restaurant plus car parking – £2.50 for 24 hours. What more could one ask? Well, possibly more than 2 days permitted mooring if I’m being selfish!
From there after our allocated time, we moved on, accompanied by a borrowed 4 year-old and his grandparents – thanks Lucas! We made it to Market Bosworth and moored up temporarily for them to disembark just before the marina where we’d experienced our first and only marina life. With just the two of us and dog aboard once more we carried on, to find a delightful mooring spot near Shackerstone a stone’s throw from the Battlefield Railway Line and its delightful cafe (spot the theme…!)
After a couple of nights we collected our own 3 year-old deputy tillerman, and we made it through the Snarestone Tunnel (where Tommy valiantly tested the acoustics at full volume – they’re amazing – check them out on our pickingupducks Instagram!) before arriving at long last at the finale of the Ashby Canal.
For the first time in all our travels we found ourselves faced with a canal closed sign and a canal-level bridge backed by stop-planks. We turned in the available winding hole, our mission complete. We can go no further on the Ashby for now.
A quick visit to the volunteer-run shop, 5 tombola tickets later we emerged the delighted owners of Ted the teddy (another one, won on the very last ticket, the only one ending in a 0!), and for a modest contribution as part of his birthday present, Steve became a member of the Ashby Canal Association. A fitting conclusion to what should have been a short journey but which has taken nearly a year to complete.
A year is nothing, compared to the efforts of those who laboured to built this canal to transport limestone and coal from the Ashby Woulds (interesting spelling isn’t it?) from 1804, or those who fought and indeed continue to fight to reopen the Ashby for boaters to enjoy in their droves today.
It is a beautiful canal, winding through beautiful countryside, much in the National Forest and it deserves the support of all who enjoy it – boaters, walkers, fishermen, canoeists, kayakers, paddleboarders, and runners of all generations. Let’s hope it can be enjoyed for generations to come, and that one way we can return again, this time to travel the full length from the Marston Junction, past the current terminus and winding hole, past the Moira Furnace to Conkers at the heart of the National Forest. If we can do that, then we can get in another excellent parkrun, just a little stroll from a mooring – if we aren’t too decrepit by that time to complete 5k!
Pickingupducks 