It is certainly quiet at night along this canal, and not that much traffic either. It was Yorkshire Day today and we celebrated by pitying everybody we saw for not having the great good fortune of living in the Ridings, the largest County in the country. I did notice that even at this fairly early stage in the Paris Olympics that Yorkshire would be 4th in the medal table where as UK as a whole would be 5th! Yorkshire would have been 12th in the table at the London Games!
A day boat went past as we were letting go but as it happened we couldn't go very fast anyway as we were obviously much deeper than they were and it was never a problem.
The sun was out again and it was very warm. I noticed this field with horses and donkeys in. It looks like the donkey has an added fringe to keep the flies out of the eyes, but not the horse.
At Bridge 44 you enter the SSSI and funnily enough instantly the canal seemed to get deeper as wit the same revs. we were going faster. This top end of the canal (at the moment) is the best bit too, especially with the woods providing dappled shade on this beautiful day.
Despite running close to the Battlefield Line we saw and heard nothing. We found that it only operates at the weekends. We got to its terminus at Shakerstone and rounded the Medieval Motte of a castle. It is surrounded by fish ponds too. I think that these were from a later manor house that was very close and the motte was used as a view point in its gardens. In WWII it seems that the Motte was 'used' as an air raid shelter! I'm not sure how, maybe they put up a large Anderson shelter type building in its shelter.
Going through Gopsal Woods was magical as the cool of the shade was so pleasant and then we were treated to a kingfisher sitting still just about long enough for me to get a picture, even though it was so far away. We were then buzzed by a buzzard that came out of the woods on the tow path side low overhead to a field on the other side with some prey in its beak to be mobbed by a couple of young.
A pretty special part of the canal. I wonder how many don't get this far due to the shallow waters?
There seemed to be plenty of cars and people at Gospal Wharf but couldn't tell what was going on.
One thing that this canal doesn't have at the moment is weed. There were just one or two patched of lillys but not obstructing passage at all. There are a few lengths of reeds that have grown to restrict the canal to single way but not as bad as some we have traveled recently.
Near to Snarestone there is the old railway bridge of the Ashby and Nuneaton Joint Railway Line. It was constructed by the Midland and London and North Western Railway. The purpose was to carry the coal that was going on the canal. The route opened in 1873 and closed to passengers in 1931 and all traffic in 1971. A short section was opened to an opencast mine in 1977 to 1988.
We were then at Snarestone Tunnel that is only 250 yards long, but even though it is so short they didn't seem to make it straight!
We got to the end and moored up by the water point to fill up and have a look at the Ashby Canal Association shop. Helen managed to find a few books that she had been looking for and I got a couple of canal books, more for a contribution as anything. We bought some lovely pots of ice cream and had a chat with the bloke manning the shop whilst we ate it.
After eating our ice cream we backed back up to the winding hole and turned round as we thought that the moorings on the other side of the tunnel were nicer. There is a length of canal completed to Bridge 62 and with a winding hole but as it was only for 52' boats we didn't ask to be allowed to head that way. Once moored up we enjoyed some reading in the sun before heading for a pint at the packed Globe pub just up the towpath above the tunnel. It was heaving at 5pm!
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