Navigation

Navigation on the canal network is a pretty simple matter, obviously, as the canal itself takes you along and just like a train on a railway track you have little say about which direction to follow.  There are few occasions when you can actually go wrong and even then there are always tell-tail signs that let you know something`s amiss.  Like a few years ago when we went wrong at Cossington lock on the River Soar and ended up heading off towards a weir.  Thankfully, the river was down and peaceful and the weir was a couple of miles away when we realized our mistake and turned around.  Even though we had missed the `turn left` chevrons for the main channel, we should have registered the lily pads completely covering the water ahead and understood that this was not a waterway that many boats passed through.

A moment of sudden awareness did happen though  the other day at the top of the Ashby - when we saw a tank coming towards us. Well, technically, we were no longer on the canal but we were following its path - the Ashby canal route from Snarestone to Measham, now defunct, filled in and in this weather, a boggy mess.  But ideal for tanky people who like driving in and out of ditches on tracked vehicles covered in mud, belching black smoke and spraying great clumps earth everywhere to the sound of high revving diesel engines.  Yes, we loved it and stood watching for ages.



Tanky people - in an armoured personnel carrier of some sort.  If this man owns a canal boat it`s a tug, with a Gardiner engine and ...



The route of the canal, now partly marked by a footpath, passes a marker post indicating how far below the old coal mine workings are.  The mine shafts have different names, colour coded on the post.  The reason this section of the canal had to close was due to leakage into these shafts, a bit of a dilemma, no doubt, for the owners and operators of both the mines and the canal - the canal was there because of the coal mines, to take the coal down to the Coventry Canal and on to London via the Grand Union.  We also passed Harveys, a boat builder and Chandler, in the middle of a field just outside Measham, the only hint of a canal connection being an old bridge that spanned nothing and carried, from what we could tell, nothing either.

Mine shafts below the route of the Ashby Canal navigation, now filled in - that`s the canal, not the mines.  Coal mining, though, has long gone in this area.  Well, almost.

Measham is a town with a mining heritage and interestingly, despite all the pit closures of the last century (1980s), we saw that mining still continues, although in a different form.  There`s a surface mine just outside the town that extracts coal and clay.  Apparently, part of the agreement with the company working the mine is that it contributes towards the cost of renovating (re-establishing) the Ashby Canal through Measham. 




It`s old, big and doesn`t appear to do a lot - and a disused canal bridge.

 



Measham.  Despite the canal no longer reaching it, Measham has a strong link with the Ashby - a literal link with the navigation soon to be reinstated, hopefully. 



We left the top of the canal on Thursday and moved down to Market Bosworth again.  The evening was beautiful, a lull before the storm, of course, as wet weather is with us today, Friday - a months worth of rain in 24 hours, so the Met Office is saying.  There`s a Sea Otter gathering at the top of the Ashby this weekend and we`ve seen a lot of these boats in the past few days as they make their way up the canal.  Lovely boats.  We hope they have a good weekend.  We`re going to sit tight, drink tea, read, blog and cook curry.



The rain`s coming...





... all the signs are there ...

 


... but are we really that bothered?