Navigating the canals with Grace

 Wednesday, 30 April, 2025, Bedworth, England

 The weather report promises to be a grand day.  We are loaded up with supplies and are underway just before 10AM.   Our destination is to head north toward the market town of Atherstone.

Terry and Christine live on Coventry Canal just before Bridge 14.  This particular canal stretches a distance of 36 canal miles.  Starting from the south, the bridges are numbered from 1 to 91, although some no longer exist.  But, these old bridges were there long before they started numbering them in the 1930's.

Navigating bridge 15

When it became necessary to build a new bridge across a canal, say between Bridge 18 and 19, they will be designate it with a letter “A” and “B” if a second one was added, i.e. 18A and 18B.  There are quite a few letter-added bridges I observed.  A lot of time these bridges become challenging with sharp turns, making blind corners.  The vast majority of them only have room for one boat.  So, if you meet an oncoming narrow boat, someone has to back off and allow the other to pass.

This direction was picked because there is a section containing 11 locks which will lower us going north and raise us coming back south.   This will help give us a taste of how things work and what it is like to navigate the canals.

It doesn’t take long to get into rural areas where we can see farm fields, some still bare dirt.  Some crops are just coming up and are hard to tell what they are.  There are fields that have a bright yellow color.  This is a crop of rapeseed, or canola.  I see no row crops of corn or soybeans so prevalent back home in Iowa.  The fields, for the most part, are smaller than back home and are generally divided off using hedge rows.  

Field of Canola alongside canal

Field showing hedge row

One of may swans we saw

 

We pass by Charity Dock, with its shoreline full of what looks like someone’s inability to throw anything away and has a passion for mannequin type objects.  It is a boat yard where owners can have their boats serviced and repaired.  Indeed, we would pass several of these types of places along the way, along with marinas for those boat owners that don’t live on a canal and have their own mooring.

 

Charity Dock

More

Things can get a little congested!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This bottom-land adjoining the canal is often used for community “allotments”.  The city owns the ground but apportions it out to individuals for use as gardens for growing produce.  There is always a waiting list to obtain a plot.  

One of the many garden allotments

More allotments

By far the most common birds we see in the water are Mallard ducks, many with ducklings.  There are also swans and moorhens.  Several swans were nesting, although we did not see any newborns (cygnets).  Also, I frequently saw Magpies, in trees and in the fields, recognizable by their large size and black and white color. 

There are quite a few narrow boats moored near towns where boaters can walk to have lunch or visit a pub, or just to rest or eat on board.  It is not uncommon to see boats that have not been moved in years.  People live on them full time.  Most have solar panels to charge batteries and inverters to convert to the British 240 VAC, which are also powered by the engine when running.  All have heating of some kind, either wood/coal stove or diesel heaters.  Grace has both. 

Our first stop was near the town of Nuneaton.  We moored not far from a bridge where we could climb up walk into town.  There is a butcher shop there that Christine wanted to go to.  We purchased some British sausage rolls and Cornish Pasties.  We were happy to try these typical English delicacies and found them to be quite good and filling.

Different Sheppard's pies

Cornish Pasties bottom right

Sausage rolls  on left, Scotch eggs on right

After leaving Nuneaton, we continued north for about an hour or so with myself spelling Terry at the tiller.  I was getting more comfortable with it and it is a great way to see the countryside and towns if the hedges allow it.  We passed another service yard called Hartshill Yard before coming to our first set of locks just after Bridge 41 at the town of Atherstone.  Terry’s plan is to overnight between locks 5 & 6.  These locks are in walking distance between them so Christine, Sue and I each get a windless and leave the boat to open the first set of paddles.  

Using windless to open/close paddle

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-Oak beams that act as a counter-weight

 

 

The lock can either be full or empty depending on which direction the last boat through was going.  If it is full, then we use our windless to turn the gear box to raise the paddles on the gate to make it easier to open the V-shaped gate.  There are large heavy arms of either oak or steel to counterbalance the weight of the gate but it still takes a pretty good push to get them to open.  The bottom gates are V-shaped, requiring two beams, and the top ones are in one piece.

Heading into an open lock on our return trip

  

Terry drives in, we close the gate behind him, drop the paddles and go forward to open the paddles and allow Grace to sink down to the lower water level.  Locks will normally lower the boat 6-8 feet.  Once down and the water pressure is equalized on both sides of the gate we can swing them open and Terry drives through.  We then close the gates, lower the paddles and walk to the next lock to repeat the procedure.  The area between the locks is called the “pound”.  Care has to be taken to not have two locks open at the same time or this may drain the pound, or low enough to make boats drag on the bottom.  The canals are an average of only four or five feet deep, so it doesn’t take much drainage to create a problem.

It takes a little training to get the hang of it and by the time we go through our 5^th lock, I’m feeling I’m getting the routine down well enough to be helpful. 

Lock keepers house for volunteers

Keeping track of lock activity

At the beginning of the lock series, a group of volunteers (Terry is one of the volunteers) are available to help those that need it.  There are marinas and others that have “Hire Boats” that you can rent.  Terry believes this can be dangerous as they don’t receive much training.  Bad things can happen, even at 3 mph!

We find a relatively quiet place to moor for the night and are joined by a couple other boats having the same idea.  There is a railway and the busy highway A5 not too far distant, but we are not bothered by them.  After enjoying a cold dinner of the Cornish Pasties and pleasant conversation, we prepared the guest bed.  Grace’s interior design did not include a guest bed.  So, Terry designed and built one using the dinette table and cushions, much the same as we had in our old Winnebago motor home.  Tired from the days activities, we sleep soundly and awake refreshed, ready for another adventure on the Coventry Canal.