Day 2 on Coventry Canal

 

 Thursday, May 1 2025

Terry at the helm

 

Polesworth Abbey

We will be spending one more night on the water, so we leave the bed made, have a quick breakfast and get underway.   We have six more locks to negotiate, which takes around two hours.  Some locks fill and empty faster than others.  The locks themselves date from 1769, but the gates have been changed many times.  Terry says they last around 25 years on average.

We continue on and  I do a lot of the steerage as there is not too much in this stretch to get me in trouble.  We moor around Bridge 53 at the village of Polesworth and hope to find a place for lunch.   We walk across a bridge dating back to 1776 which spans the River Anker.  This ancient village was once a mining town.  It is the home of Polesworth Abby, which dates from the late 600s and was once a Benedictine nunnery.  It is still active today and holds regular services. 

 The first pub we try does not serve food and he suggests a café which turns out to be closed.  We settle on a fish and chips that is a take-away only.  We ask a nearby pub if it is ok to eat our meal there and she said absolutely!  I think it is a common occurrence.  Terry and I order drinks while the girls leave to get fish and chips.  The bartender is very accommodating, even giving us plates and cutlery.  What hospitality!   Sue found out while ordering at the Chippy (UK slang for a Fish & Chips shop), that the owner was originally from Brooklyn, NY.  He married and English girl and decided to settle here.  The food was good and satisfying.  We helped clean up and Terry headed back to the boat, Christine went shopping and Sue and I did some geocaching around the Abbey.  One took us on a half-mile hike along the river, but we did not find the cache.  But we were able to find two others.

Polesworth Chippy

Continuing north, we pass the village of Alvecote and on the opposite bank on the way, Terry points out the ruins of the Alvecote Priory through the trees.  It dates back to the 12^th century.  There is not much left of it but the entrance arch is clearly visible along with some remaining walls.

Alvecote Priory

We pass by Pooley Country Park which has a café and moorings.  It is where Christine and Terry have friends that live on a narrow boat there and lease some land from the county.  Ray has a workshop and Christine’s friend Penny, has an art studio.  I am on the tiller, and we slow down and hail them but did not raise anyone.  We continue on for another half hour or so and come to a turning point just before Bridge 63.  I turn the boat over to Terry and he maneuvers a turnabout in the 70-foot-wide area.

This time we stop at their friends’ mooring and they are home.  We visit Ray and Penny for about 20 minutes, find a geocache while there and head back south.

It is getting to be late afternoon by the time we clear two locks, this time rising each time.  We moor between locks 9 and 10 in a rural area next to a canola field that is in full yellow bloom.  The field gives off a kind of pungent odor.  Our senses soon adapt, and it is not as noticeable.  Again, we have some neighbors overnight here as well. 

We enjoy a pleasant evening before retiring, hoping to get a decent start in the morning although we are in no particular hurry.

Friday, 2 May

We have nine locks to negotiate before getting back on the level for smooth sailing back to Bedworth.  All goes well with us three handling the gates and Terry steering through.  We do have to wait on occasion, and it takes us over two hours to get through to Gate No. 1 and the Gate House where the volunteers hang out. 

Me at the helm under the watchful eye of Terry

I do a lot of steering on the way home and get along fine until I come to a blind corner with a bridge and meet an oncoming boat.  He is closer to the bridge than me so I need to give him the right of way.  I quickly reverse, but reversing a twenty-ton narrowboat doesn’t happen quickly, and I find myself heading for the brush side of the canal and getting momentarily hung up on a recently trimmed branch hanging over into the canal, Oops!  I’m hoping it didn’t leave any scratches on Grace’s paint job.  Terry comes up from down below and helps me get underway again.

 

 

 

  

                                 (I should have posted some of these videos on my last post)

Video: Going through the first two locks on Day 1  

Video:  Meeting another narrowboat at the Nuneaton Yard

Video: Country scene on Coventry Canal 

Video: Going under Bridge 16

Christine is a bread maker.  We have been eating homemade bread since we have been here.  Before we left on our cruise, Christine brought some sourdough starter from her fridge which had been there for quite a while and she is not sure it is still viable.  It is in a small glass jar, a marble-size ball, surrounded by flour.  She disposes of the flour and adds 25 grams of organic whole meal rye flour and 25 grams of water.  She mixes it well, marks the level with a rubber band and sets it aside to see if it will rise overnight.  It took more than a day, but we did finally see some bubble formation.  She fed it another time or two before we got home, by that time it was growing well.

The rest of the trip home is uneventful, and we revisit all the allotments and service yards along the way.  It turned out to be another beautiful sunny day and a rewarding three days and two nights that Sue and I will remember and talk about in the years to come.