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Locked down in Shackerstone

Locked down in Shackerstone

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Been here for going on a month now.

Movement is not encouraged on the canal networks at this moment.

Only ‘essential’ travel is permitted. This basically means when your toilet needs emptying, or your water-tank needs filling.

Traffic is down to 0.

Very few boats moving around. 0 this week so far.

Empty narrowboat water-tank
Empty water-tank

This is how my water-tank looked at the end of last week.

That’s about a day’s worth of water in the bottom.

I couldn’t really move because the canal was iced over.

Moving whilst there’s ice isn’t really advisable. Some ppl get shirty when you move past their boats when there’s thick ice. Some ppl get angry even when it’s thin ice. ‘It might damage my boat’.

It’s better to let it thaw out. Plus, thick ice makes it difficult to navigate.

Luckily, when I moved down to get water, a boat had gone on before me and it was just a case of following his trail of broken ice!

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View to Whitwick
Bosworth -> Shackerstone

Bosworth -> Shackerstone

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Sorry it’s been such a long time since my last installment.

Since then I’ve moved the boat 3 times from it’s previous location near the village of Dadlington, where it was quite nice with good wifi and solar.

The three things you need really are 1) parking 2) good phone signal 3) solar to make a mooring semi-decent.

It’s taken a while to find out the next place to stop on the Ashby.

The place I’m stopped in now is in a designated area of special scientific interest. Which means you can only moor in ‘selected spaces’.

Shenton to Congerstone.

Are places I passed through and either the parking wasn’t there, or they had bad mobile or non-existent mobile signal.

The current location is maybe 8 miles or so from Dadlington, the location of my last blog.

Rather than make this journey all in one stretch, I decided that because the weather was bad, it would be better to split it in half.

Shallow canal

The Ashby is shallow compared to other canals I’ve been on. Even the Kennet and Avon is deeper from what I can make out.

I’d say the depth is about 4-6ft. Never any more than that.

Bosworth Field along the Ashby canal
Bosworth Field along the Ashby canal

Progress is restricted by the depth of the canal; the dynamics of the water meaning that progress above a certain speed isn’t physically possible.

Whether you like it or not, you’re going to be tootling along on this one….

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Dadlington - Ashby Canal
Stoke Golding -> Dadlington in-the-fields

Stoke Golding -> Dadlington in-the-fields

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Very much in the fields. This is rural Leicestershire, as it says on the County signs….

Towpaths

Mud, glorious mud.....
Glorious….

Are turning into a mud fest. October was the wettest on record in certain parts of the country https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-54561601.

I’m not the greatest fan of muddy towpaths.

Luckily, nowadays, I don’t have to put on any work gear, as there is no longer any work…. otherwise I would be moaning more vehemently about these long skidmarks of mud along my journey toward where the car is parked.

A couple of days I’ve had to don wellies to get through, but generally I can just skirt around the edges.

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