Hawkesbury to Hartshill….

Coventry Canal

We left our mooring at Hawkesbury Junction this morning in sunshine, but by the time we had emptied the loo cassettes and filled with water, the clouds had rolled in and it was beginning to look like we would get wet at some point today.  By ‘we’, I mean the royal ‘We’ of course – I scuttle off inside the boat and put my feet up and leave the captain to get wet! The humidity shot up and it became very uncomfortable.

 

Hawkesbury Junction – very peaceful this morning

The ‘stop lock’, all of 8 inches deep

Negotiating the bend

Round in one – no problem

We could see the storm gathering over to our left and the thunder and lightening started, but we must have been on the very edge of the storm as we only got a few spits and spots of rain, then the sky lightened again.

Through Bedworth, where we saw the old ‘Navigation’ pub had been completely gutted.  So gutted in fact, that we thought they were tearing it down at first.  It looks like some developer has bought it and is turning it into apartments.  I can’t see the brewery spending so much to refurbish a pub which closed some years ago due to lack of trade.

The old ‘Navigation’

and on past Charity Dock, which was as chaotic as ever, with a few new mannequins on show.

We had to look twice at this one to make sure it wasn’t a real person!

Passing Marston Junction – the start of the Ashby canal

We went on through Nuneaton, with it’s towering quarry spoil tips, Mount Judd being the largest, but no photo as I was inside the boat. The heavens were darkening again by this time, and we realised that this time we weren’t going to be so lucky.  I did my disappearing act as the rain started, and left Rog to get wet

The photo doesn’t really show how dark it got – darker than it was at 10 o’clock last night

Eventually the rain eased as we reached our planned mooring spot for today, just after Hartshill yard.  We got fairly wet mooring up as the grass is knee-high and the towpath had turned into a small stream, but we are so glad we stopped when we did as 10 minutes later we had the most horrendous thunder storm.  The thunder and lightening were right overhead, and we were looking around to make sure we weren’t the highest point around, so close was the lightening!  It hammered down for a good twenty minutes, hail mixed in with the rain – I can’t remember ever having been in a storm as bad since we have been boating!  It’s rained on and off for most of the afternoon, but we are having periods of sunshine in between so at least we can open the side hatches from time to time to let in some breeze – the thermometer is reading 26 degrees and the humidity is 82% inside the boat.  Gonna be a hot night tonight!!

Throwing it down!

8.7 miles and 1 lock (if you can call it a lock!)