On to Fazeley, wanted boats and shut marinas

18th & 19th September

It was a fine but very cold morning, so I lit the stove again when we got up, and we were glad of it for the rest of the day.

Stopping at the foot of Atherstone to water, we then went on through Alvecote and Amington, arriving at the top of Glascote just after 11. On the way we had a bit of excitement – there’s been an appeal amongst the online boating community for sightings of a guy who’s skipped bail in Gloucestershire by going off on his boat, and we passed a boat answering the description between Polesworth and Alvecote. I duly rang the poilice number supplied and reported it. Whether we ever hear the final outcome is another matter.

We’d heard that there continued to be a problem with the bottom lock of the Glascote two, and this was confirmed when we arrived. It seems BW have had three goes at fixing a leaking bottom cill, and now the situation is made worse by the fact that the top ground paddle culverts, never quick at the best of times, are partially blocked.

The upshot was that the lock was taking anything from 15 to 20 minutes to fill each time. Given the amount of traffic around at the moment, this meant that queues were building up, leading to people having to wait for up to two hours to pass the pair of locks. The worst of it had been during the Bank Holiday weekend, when waits had reached 6 hours, i.e. most of a day’s cruising time.

Part of the trick, we were told, was not to empty the top lock until the bottom one was full, thus reducing the head of water above the failing lock, so that it “made” (ie reached a level inside and out) more easily.

In the event, we got through just before 12, having waited about 50 minutes.

We moored just the Glascote side of Fazeley Junction. Dipping the fuel tank showed that it was about a third full, enough for another week or so if we pushed it, but it would be more sensible tomorrow to go down to Fazeley Mill marina, on the Birmingham and Fazeley canal, rather than tanking at Streethay next week, Streethay being rather expensive.

We used the afternoon to clean the inside of the boat, and had a lazy evening, including a fish and chip supper.

This morning we went round to the Mill Marina, only to find that it isn’t open on Wednesdays. It would be really helpful if they’d put that sort of info on the signs at the junction, so saving folks from going down there and having to do a tricky winding in the marina mouth to come back. Apart from anything else, if we’d known yesterday, we could have gone down there then and given them the business. As it is, we’ll have to hope that one of the working boats at the Huddlesford Gathering this weekend will have diesel for sale, or it’ll have to be Streethay after all.

We’ve come round to our shopping mooring by Sutton Road bridge (as I’ve said before, this bit of the Coventry was built by the Birmingham and Fazeley company, so the bridges are named, not numbered).

We did two lots of shopping – some Christmas present stuff and things in the morning, then food at Sainsbury’s after lunch.