There were no ill effects of our partying last night and we were off in the normal time frame. It had been raining until about 09:00, but it was warm and no wind. Opposite the entrance to the Bosworth Marina is where the old gas works was and now is a housing development. Just the other side of the road bridge was the wharf and then a brick works, and once again this has provided land for a large housing development. I think this is logical building on the site of old industry, but I'm not sure that there is any social housing in there and where they all go to work?
These cows were just a bit slow at getting up after the rain had finished.
We pottered along in the shallow water and the sun came out. We needed a few things so stopped at Stoke Golding to visit the farm shop at bridge 25. They had all we needed, and not expensive, so saved a walk up to the village.
Tom get to the farm you have to pass the old railway station and the bridge over the line. It certainly still looks like a station but the line has long gone. Just to the south of Stoke Golding station the railway splits into two. The main route of the Ashby and Nuneaton railway, that was jointly built by the Midland Railway and the London and North Western Railway, headed off to the south west and they two company's also built a branch that went to Hinkley, opened in 1873. It was a double track liner and it was likely it was part of the negotiations between the Midland and LNWR and as the main traffic was coal and there was a well adapted junction at Nuneaton, so this line was never used. In fact is was never passed as safe to use and in 1900 the track was taken up. It was officially abandoned by Act of Parliament in 1914! Money to burn in those days it seems.
The wharf at Stoke Golding was one of the main ones on the canal and obviously had a house for the wharfinger. The the pump out cart is a little unusual too.
This is next to the Hinkley Arm. At the end of the arm is the Wharf pub and a house called Port House. Next to the wharf was a patent brick and tile works along with lime kilns. The pit where the clay was dug from has been repurposed as a lake for the use of the Sea Cadets, and they were making full use of it on a lovely warm day like this one.
This high tension electricity pylon looked like a giant emerging from behind the hill and set me on admiring the structures. I have posted 1656 posts since I started and in December 2015 I wrote a blog about the pylons I had seen that year and it unbelievably the 6th most popular of all time.
I can tell you that the pylons that have the insulators hanging down are for when they are in a straight line. I can also tell you that the single wire at the very top is not a transmission wire but acts as lightening conductor for the array.
Just before Burton Hastings two lines of pylons cross. It is quite interesting how they do this. One line of pylons is dipped under the other. The cable from one side of the structure goes to this low pylon on one side of the route to be crossed and the other side goes to a similar one the other side of the big pylon. You can see here that the conductors are horizontal and this indicates that the line is not a straight line and is obviously bending around the pylon on the other route.
This is the two lines of pylons just before they converge. Again you can see that the one on the right has horizontal conductors showing that this is the line to be dipped under the other set. I believe this is an M5 deviation tower. On the left are the more common L6 type.
There is a fair bit of controversy about having to erect a lot more transmission towers across the country to get green electricity from where it is produced to where it is needed. I quite admire them. I wouldn't one in my back garden but seeing them striding across the hill side is quite inspiring. Maybe they could have a go at designing a new style of pylon that looks 'better' or more interesting!
We stopped for the night near to Burton Hastings and had an hour or two on the towpath in the sun before heading in for our tea.
2 comments:
They already have! https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60754357
Hi Adam, when I have previously blogged about pylons I saw there were some new interesting designs, some that would work in specific places, eg a representative of a bird, and some that were not economical enough to fabricate at volume. I did see that this design was going to be used on some routes but didn't know it was already being deployed. Another one to spot on our journeys. Hope you are both well.
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