Busy, busy, busy!

As we sat in bed drinking tea and doing our daily crossword this morning, we were passed by several boats going towards Atherstone. Our way. It looked like it was going to be a busy day. Eleven locks to ascend, with several boats ahead of us.

In fact, "busy" is a misnomer. When a canal is busy, much like a road, the individual might actually spend a lot of time doing little or nothing. And after we'd driven the mile to Bradley Green services, and a further mile to Atherstone Bottom Lock, we found it busy. With lots of people doing nothing. There was a queue above and below the lock. We were fourth in line at the bottom, with more boats arriving behind us. One up, one down, one up, one down, one...

By the time we'd done two locks and travelled two miles from our overnight mooring, it was 1:00pm. And we'd started at 10:00am! And so it continued. Of course, it's not nearly so bad to be on a busy canal as it is to be on a busy road, because people on roads are generally in a hurry, and people on canals are usually not. And we got time to meet people, to chat, to wash the boat...

After lock 6, we stopped to have lunch and to shop at a nearby Co-Op. When we got back to Kantara it was about 4:00, and we seemed to have the locks to ourselves, so our ascent the rest of the way was unimpeded. We had the added benefit of a couple of boats coming down, and leaving the locks ready for us, and it wasn't long before we arrived at Top Lock.

Beyond Atherstone and Mancetter, we moored overnight at a secluded spot past bridge 35.

We'd travelled about 5 miles in 7½ hours. Busy, busy, busy!

I loved Atherstone Locks

We'd chosen a really lovely place to moor yesterday afternoon. The railway was at a respectable distance, and. despite the wind, which felt like gale force inside the rocking, very shaken boat, we had a peaceful stop. In the morning, Grace had work to do on her laptop, so we set out about an hour later than expected. No problem, though, since this was to be a shortish day's travel anyway.

We chuckled at the sign on a shed at the bottom of a canalside garden,
"Grandpa's shed. Strictly no entry! Trespassers will be shot. Survivers will be shot again!"

and we were amazed at NB JayBee's solar panel array. Twelve of them, flat in the roof, each of them taking up the entire width of the roof and pretty much the entire length of it. That's a lot of power, even on a dull day!

While I admit that my memory's never been as good as I'd like it to be, I was more than a little surprised that I arrived at the top of Atherstone Locks to find that I had little or no memory of it at all. That continued down the whole flight of ten. Worrying! But I loved Atherstone Locks. 

The top lock was manned by a very friendly vollie, and given a short talk about the history of the immediate area. Lock 2 was supervised by the wife of vollie number 1, a lady who knew the canals well, and made several suggestions of detours we might make on this trip. Lock 3's vollie's wife also worked on this flight, though she was unwell today, and not there. I have rarely seen female vollies. This flight has four of them on its rota, all of them with their husbands.

The top lock has a Book Swap outside its vollie-hut. They sell plants there, too. A young man coming up the lock offered more books to add to the collection, and the vollie accepted gratefully. I then watched his jaw drop as the man went down into his boat, and came up a few minutes later carrying five or six carrier bags full to bursting with paperbacks.

At the third lock, I chatted as usual with the vollie. We opened the gates for Kantara to enter, emptied the lock, opened the bottom gates. We were still chatting as I walked down the steps to the foot of the lock, where I would step back onto the boat as Grace brought her out. We were still in conversation when I stepped onto the gunnels. And still, when Grace shouted out "Bridge!" I turned in horror to see a low bridge looming towards me. I couldn't step off the boat again. It was too late to walk quickly along the gunnels towards the stern, where I would be able to step into the profile of the boat. In desperation, I lay my head and shoulders on the roof and pulled myself in as close as I could to the cabin side.

I made it. Obviously. Otherwise I'd not be writing this. But it was a scary moment, I can tell you, and one to remind me not to become distracted by anything when getting on or off a moving craft.

At the fourth lock, a young couple were coming up on their week's hire-boat, and I chatted for a while with the woman, who was doing the locking. They were canal holiday veterans, having done ten over the same number of years, and were determined to have their own narrowboat when they retired - in over 20 years' time. We talked about the cost of hiring a boat for the week. We used to pay in the region of £1,000 when we were canal-holidaying back in the day. Now, she told me, it can be up to £1,600! So, if you buy a second-hand boat for, say £60,000, you've paid for the cost of it in the equivalent of about 38 weeks of holidays! That'd be 38 years for most of us!! That makes buying a boat sound cheap!

This is a picturesque lock flight. The mechanisms are well maintained, and easy to use. Our descent was a delight. We stopped half-way down for lunch. Goldcrests perched on a nearby fence, and swallows skimmed the surface of the water at high speed. A fly-through feast.

Carrying on an hour or so later, we passed NB Miner Bill, though Nikki and Ralph - Twitter contacts of mine - were apparently not there. Beyond Bridge 50, we pulled over to moor for the night. This is another beautiful spot, seemingly miles from anywhere. Cows are looking over a gate, curious about our arrival. There are just two other boats visible.

Since receiving some good advice from the Northants Fire & Rescue Service (when they came to the marina a couple of years ago, to give a talk on safety aboard boats), I keep a log while we are out on the cut, a record of the location of each day's mooring. One doesn't like to think about it, but should we need emergency services, we'd have to be able to give them accurate information about our whereabouts. The fireman at Yelvertoft gave out copies of a form they recommended for the job, which requires the name of the canal you're on, the name and/or number of the nearest bridge, name and/or number of the nearest road, visible landmarks - all sorts. I used this for a while, but last year I installed an app on my phone that simply gives me the current map reference, accurate to 10 metres. I record this in a notebook at the end of each day. Hoping we'll never need it. Today's is SK278016.

And very pretty it is, too.

Tuesday and Wednesday

Tuesday started cold, grey and windy. It had rained overnight, and more rain seemed entirely likely, so we dropped the idea of doing the long day through Atherstone, and made our way less ambitiously to Meadow Lane Bridge (50) a mile or so beyond Polesworth. Grace was needing good Internet access at around noon, so we chose a spot with good 3G reception, and moored there.

We ran the engine and switched on the 230v generator to get some washing done, and Grace settled down at her laptop. Just after the washing had finished, we noticed that the generator had stopped, so I went to restart it – at which point it went bang! and refused to work any more. This is the same generator which failed a year ago, on the same canal, not more than 20 miles away! AND cost an arm and several toes to repair!

At around the same moment, the router seemed to have gone down as well, for when we switched on the inverter to power it, it kept giving us error messages, and would not connect to the Internet on what was a very strong 3G signal. Our hearts sank. No more generator, possibly no more washing until we get back to the marina in two or three weeks' time, and no more Internet use.

Well, we do have a dongle for that, but only one of us can use it at a time. So we put the SIM card in that, and tried it – nothing. We put in another, spare SIM card – still nothing. Thus proving that the problem did not lie with our router or SIM card, but with our Internet Service Provider, 3.

Wednesday was brighter and warmer. It had rained again during the night, but that seemed to have passed. We set off at 9:45 towards the Atherstone Locks. Canal traffic was very heavy compared with how it was only a week ago. It's good to see.

The locks were easy on the whole, and a number were empty ready for us when we arrived. Further, because of the traffic, I was hardly ever alone at the locks, with crew from other boats being there to work the other side from me. So it was that we moored just before Taverner's Bridge (40) at just 1:15, three and a half hours since we started. Not the long day I had anticipated!

We had lunch, then walked into the town to the largest Co-Op supermarket we've ever seen, and bought lots of provisions. It was good to stock up again! I have to apologise to Atherstone and its people. Having spent some time there, I now think I was totally misinformed about it. It most certainly isn't inhospitable, and seems to be a lovely place. We've decided that, come the autumn or early winter – whenever we finish cruising for the year – we'll have to drive out to visit some of the places we've not explored on this cruise. Atherstone has to be one of them.

We would have stayed overnight where we were moored at the top of the locks, but 3G signal was poor, and we needed it this evening, so we moved another couple of miles to Atherstone Road Bridge (32) and secured a very pleasant mooring there.

The weather is good, and it's a lovely evening.