August 2026 - Framework knitting, crab-clawing and yoinking!!

Sutton Wharf (Ashby Canal) – Sunday 19^th July
 
The morning was a bit grey but it soon changed into a fairly hot day.
 
We stopped for water at Hinckley, which is not only well known for it’s water tap (!) but it is famous for its framework knitting which was introduced to Hinckley in 1640 by William Iliffe. What is framework knitting?  Well you knit socks and stockings with it! The industry took over the area with most of the knitting done in local cottages by outworkers.  In 1722 Robert Atkins took over the industry and then built a factory in the 1870s.  However in the 1960s, when miniskirts came into fashion, stockings fell out of favour but Hinckley's factories rapidly re-tooled their machines to produce millions of pairs of tights.  The industry finally closed it’s doors in Hinckley in 2002. 

One of the places we like Sutton Wharf is as there is a lovely cafe there!  But on a more mundane subject, there is also toilet emptying, water and rubbish, or there was, it is now closed which was annoying.  There is a nice pontoon just up from the cafe with room for three boats and it was all free :-)  We moved up there and moored up - we were under some trees.  I took Rio for a walk and it was found a lovely copse along the path which was lovely and cool.  Rio decided to roll in the dust and I ended up with a grey/brown dog!

We all walked to the cafe for cocktails!  I had Pimms which was just what the doctor ordered which was followed by an icecream from a little canal boat.  I had taken the watering can with me and got some funny looks, but we wanted to fill it with clean water and try and get our black and white dog back. It almost worked but I think he will still need a proper shower with shampoo.
 
We sat out under the trees and shared a honey and mustard chicken that I had cooked while we had been cruising along.  I like cooking as we are moving and the view changes all the time!  By about 8.30pm we all had jumpers on as it had turned quite chilly.

Sutton Wharf was established when the canal was opened in 1804 as an intermediate loading and unloading point serving the surrounding estates and agricultural villages.  It shipped out things like grain, hay and timber while bringing in lime to fertilize the local clay soils.

 
8½ miles
 
 
River Sence Aqueduct (Ashby Canal) - Monday 20th July
 
It was a chilly night but we seemed to be back to the hot normal again this morning.
 
The canal was quite busy and quite shallow which made all sort of problems when passing other boats.  We came across one chap who had just picked his boat up and was really struggling trying to pass us.
 

We passed Market Bosworth which is well known for the Battle of Bosworth Field which took place in August 22^nd 1485 (197,555 days or 540 years, 10 months, 29 days ago!!)  Henry Tudor’s forces defeated King Richard III, ending the Plantagenet dynasty and establishing the Tudor era/  Richard III was the last English monarch to die in battle.  Some years ago Richard and I walked to the battlefield only to discover that the Heritage Centre and monument are in the wrong place!  Between 2005 and 2009 an archaeological survey proved that the battle was actually fought about one mile southwest!  Cheated or what???

 
Steve knew of a nice mooring place which, when we got there, had space, so we moored up in the shade and, guess what?  We sat out and chatted before having a BBQ.  It was much warmer later on, but we did still need our jumpers about 9pm.
 
I’m  not doing very well with taking photos so far, I MUST TRY HARDER!!
 
7 miles
 
 
Snarestone Wharf (Ashby Canal) – Tuesday 21st July
 
We had a short day today, but we wanted to get to Snarestone Wharf early as there aren’t many mooring spaces and we had a Sainsbury’s delivery booked.
 
Just before the wharf is Snarestone Tunnel which is only 250 yards long.  To go through a tunnel you have to use your tunnel light but Richard discovered that ours wasn’t working.  Enter Linda the Light!  I had to sit at the front with a torch so any oncoming boat could see us.  Bearing in mind I could see the other end, I really don’t think it was necessary.  However, I managed to get, what I think are, a couple of nice photos. 

There were just two spaces left at Snarestone which is what we wanted to see.  We moored up and put the chairs out under a very welcome tree.  Our shopping arrived and it must have been a strange sight with four people grabbing stuff out of crates and stuffing it into bags while calling out “I think this is yours”!  We didn’t need much but I had been working out some recipes to cook for the four of us and needed the dry ingredients.  We also needed wine as when we got our Tesco order last week they had run out of our wine and didn’t substitute it.  It was quite a walk back to the boats especially with bottles of wine.

I asked Jem for to suggest a synonym for “grabbing”  He came up with this, it made me chuckle!!!!

“Ah, the classic supermarket delivery dash! Nothing quite tests your reflexes like being handed a pile of loose crates at the door and having to do a high-speed, military-precision packing operation on the spot. It’s an absolute spectator sport—four people bent double, frantically crab-clawing tins of beans, yoinking loaves of bread from the bottom before they get crushed, and stuffing it all into bags like a desperate Supermarket Sweep challenge.” 

We sat most of the afternoon until dinner time.  I had cooked a chilli and bought all the makings for tacos.  I had bought the crispy ones which were not easy to eat – my t-shirt had to go into the wash!

Snarestone Wharf was originally built as a critical transshipment hub for the rural Leicestershire borderlands, serving local agriculture, brickworks, and minor coal pits.  Deep pit workings beneath the northern Ashby line caused catastrophic sinkage and embankment breaches beyond Snarestone throughout the 1940s and 1950s.  When the final northern section through Measham was officially abandoned in 1966, the canal was truncated immediately north of Snarestone Tunnel at Bridge 62.  In 2009, Snarestone Wharf became the base of operations for extending the canal northwards. The section beyond Bridge 62 was re-excavated and lined, pushing the navigable channel a few hundred yards further toward the new Measham extension site, proving that the lost line could be brought back to life.  Navigation currently extends about 400 meters past Snarestone Tunnel to Bridge 62 (Quarry Lane), complete with a temporary winding hole.
 
3 miles