The Ashby Canal

 

Having passed through another canal junction yesterday, it is time to do a another posting on our blog. Actually this was Marston Junction which we've passed before. But the Ashby Canal is a dead end so we were bound to come back the same way. This posting is all about our trip up the Ashby Canal the navigable portion of which is 22 miles long and without any locks.

On our first night on the Ashby we moored near to Higham on the Hill and walked up to the village in the evening. They were having a children's hunt for nursery rhyme themes in woollen tableaux either knitted or crochet. This was of course the Old Woman who lived in a Shoe.

A preserved steam railway called the Battlefield Line runs parallel with the canal giving tourists access  to the Battle of Bosworth site where Richard of York (Richard III) was killed by the future King Henry VII to end the Wars of the Roses and to usher in the Tudor dynasty. During the week the trains are usually run by diesel locos, but being a weekend we enjoyed the site of this GWR steam loco.

The Ashby has some fine stone built canal bridges, over 60 of them in its 22 miles. This one is Bridge 61 near the present end of the navigation.

A little way beyond the present end is this engine house which used to pump water from a well near here to Hinckley quite a few miles away. The engine house is now a private house.

Last time we came this way (2019) we were able to go beyond the present navigable limit to a new bridge from which this picture was taken. Because the winding hole beyond the bridge is only for max 52 foot boats, we had to pull Leo backwards for a third of a mile to reach this point! Since then this newly restored extension to the canal seems to be suffering a leak and the canal authority won't let you go this far. The Ashby Canal Society have the intention of restoring the canal to reach its original end near Moira. On the day after our arrival (Wednesday 29 May) we cycled there.

The last few miles of this part of the canal are in water but do not join to the section Leo had come up. The picture shows the final canal basin at Conkers.

The Ashby Canal was built primarily to carry coal dug out of mines in and around Moira. Sadly this was also its demise in that the land sank into the mines and severed the canal. The Society has built a new lock (shown under the bridge) at Moira to allow the last mile to be reached by boat. This lock is 9 or 10 feet deep which gives a good idea of how much the land has sunk, given that originally no lock was needed.

And here is the view of Moira Lock from above. Oddly it is a wide lock in a land of narrow canals and it has three sets of gates so that you can use part of the full length of the lock, depending on craft size.

A short way above the lock we came to Moira Furnace which was a short-lived attempt to make iron using the coal and also local limestone. The iron was never good enough in quality and the enterprise failed.

In this view from below, the huge furnace is more obvious. It was stoked from above on a bridge over the canal.

There are some characteristic milestones on the Ashby. This one from beyond the present navigable limit indicates you are 28 miles from the start and 2 miles from the far end at Conkers.

Working our way  back towards Leo (broadly south) we eventually ran out of water at Donisthorpe. From here back to Leo we had to use roads.

Having turned Leo round at Snarestone we set off back down the Ashby Canal and went to the visitor centre for the Battle of Bosworth. Here is the pennant of the victor, Henry Tudor ..

... and here is Richard's pennant with the wild boar. Richard of course is the king that had the misfortune to be buried under a car park in Leicester, though he now has a very tasteful tomb in the cathedral there.

We rather liked this sculpture in the  Visitor Centre, showing Richard's head on one side and Henry's on the other.

After the Battle, Henry was crowned on a temporary basis at the nearby village of Stoke Golding where the event is commemorated in the village sign.

We changed a gas cylinder at Stoke Golding Wharf which has these attractive cottages. Note the 'poo' wagon to the right!

After several days damp and chilly weather, the sun came out on Sunday as this picture of another fine stone bridge (no 6) shows.

The bridge seen in the distance through this one is the first and last bridge on the Ashby Canal at Marston Junction.

And this picture is taken looking back as we came through Marston Junction turning right onto the Coventry Canal heading north. The narrow section seen through the bridge is the original 'stop lock'. Canal companies jealously guarded their water supplies and put in these locks with very little drops simply to avoid their water supplying the neighbouring company's canal. Nowadays many, though not all, of these have been taken away.

Having turned north on the Coventry Canal our way lies to Atherstone, Polesworth and Tamworth to pass Fazeley Junction where one could turn off to go to the centre of Birmingham. We are not going that way and more will be revealed in our next posting.