We left our mooring and filled up with water then cruised up to
Hawkesbury Junction. Another boater told
Richard that were several dead sheep in the canal, but Richard said he only saw
two – but that’s two too many.
Richard executed the turn at Hawkesbury excellently and reversed onto
the services area. It was then up the
Coventry Canal, with a stop for lunch, and onto the Ashby Canal.
We passed Charity Wharf with its eclectic collection of
bric-a-brac. I found a very good article
in Towpath Talk which you might find interesting as it tells you not only about
the boatyard but also the mannequins.
Steve Hayward once said in Canal Boat magazine, “More like a scrapyard
than a boatyard … squalor with a history. … The dock then was run by the legendary
Joe Gilbert, a man not noted for his efficiency, and the place was always full
of people for whom he'd promised to complete some job which he hadn't yet got
round to."
We hadn’t been on the Ashby long before another boat, Sparrowark, had a
head on with us. Richard said that the
other boat came round the corner on the wrong side of the canal, he put Mary H
into reverse but Sparrowhawk kept on coming and coming until the two boats
collided. The chap said that he couldn’t
see us so I said that if he didn’t have dark glasses on he might have seen us
to which he replied “I’ve got cataracts and am having them done next week”. He was too far away to hear my reply “if you
can’t see you shouldn’t be steering a boat”.
He has got to be a danger to other boats, if not himself, if he is
steering whilst practically blind.
I was reading through the blogs from the last time we were on the Ashby
in August 2016 and I talked about it being windy – its flippin’ windy today too
but the washing was dry in no time!
This is the view from my kitchen tonight 😊
8.78 miles
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