A day of coincidences.

 Such an eventful day, I hardly know where to start.

Well this morning we got to the top of the Ashby - well as far as you can currently get.  Soon boats will be able to go half a mile further as next Monday work starts in installing a new stop gate to control the passage into the next watered section.

There a nice little shop at the current head of navigation selling ice creams and bric a brac to raise funds for the canal restoration.  

They are currently quite a few million short of the full cost but every little helps.

Just beyond the shop, hidden by trees, you can glimpse the pumping house which draws water from an old mine shaft over 500ft deep and sends it to the good people of Hinckley for their daily needs.  

These days it runs on electric pumps of course but the beams of the former steam engine have been saved for posterity and are displayed by the canal side.

When we arrived a man (about our age) came past with a shopping bag.  "Ah ", quoth I, " is there a shop in the village?". "Only a farm shop", he replied,"What was it you wanted?", "Oh just some barbecue coal", I said.  "Hmm have you got any cooking oil?", said the man.  Well to cut a long story short, I supplied him with a small bottle of cooking oil and a cup of sugar and he gave me enough BBQ coal for three meals.  Result! Everyone happy.

Coming back through Snarestone tunnel 

I could see a boat at the other end waiting to come in.  When we emerged into the daylight the man on the waiting boat suddenly threw his arms wide and shouted "Hello".  Well blow me down if it wasn't our old friend and expert chimney maker Alex - Lord of Emslow and mutual friend of the lovely Mortimer Bones.

Back beyond Shackerstone Alex caught up with us and we moored up together and spent a very  pleasant evening swapping stories and sipping surprisingly nice Lidl chardonnay.  I happened to mention that I had a lot of rain water in Herbie's bilge and Alex confided that on his very small boat he had two wet and dry vacuum cleaners (people who know Alex won't be all that surprised), so at breakfast time tomorrow we have a date to suck the offending fluid from our bilges.  Another result!

There'll be more to say about the Ashby canal in a later post, but until then, enjoy the promised heatwave.