North Oxford and Coventry stuff

A certain reader who shall be nameless has cruelly dragged me out of the pub by texting that he needs more news of our exploits! Oh alright then.

Leaving Braunston, we hacked on up the North Oxford (remember this is all new ground for us).  Not enough locks, but very nice all the same.  I have an idea for the new waterways charity or trust or whatever it is.  Find a way of making an expensive perfume or some herbal medicine out of meadowsweet and you'll make a mint.  The North Oxford has it in absolute abundance for mile after mile after mile. 

Rugby, which we expected to see, is invisible from the canal.  I expect it's there somewhere. Just north of there we passed through Newbold Tunnel, of which it is virtually compulsory to take photographs.  A rare example of canal psychedelia.

Eventually we reached Hawkesbury junction on Monday evening.

 Everyone recommends the Greyhound pub there, and we weren't disappointed. We'll be back!

On Tuesday we detoured the five miles down into Coventry basin.  Dire warnings of floating rubbish in the canal were very much overstated and we thought it was fine.  Interesting too.  Did you know they have a special device for sweeping your boat roof as you pass?

It brushes your hair too.

We moored in the basin.  Not a salubrious area but the basin itself  is OK, and you can walk into the city centre in ten minutes.  Like most other visitors we went to see the Cathedral, a monument to the best of 1960's art and design.  It still looks great today.

The basin is brightly lit at night so we felt safe enough,

even though my hands shook when I took one picture.

Today we carried on up the Coventry canal and I like it very much.  No locks yet (tomorrow we have some) , but the countryside is lush and the canal weaves about in a gentle way.   The people of Nuneaton are owed an apology by Canal Boat magazine.  In their feature about the Coventry Canal they warned that we might find Nuneaton uninspiring.  I can't see why.  We enjoyed looking at all the very well kept back gardens on the canal side and a huge number of allotments all flourishing.  I bet garden centres hereabouts do really well.

I'm not sure where we are now, but there's a pub, so that's ok.  I'm not sure where we'll be tomorrow night either.  Isn't that what it's all about?