Tuesday 17 July 2018

Kingsbury Water Park

We reckoned two and a half to three hours from Sutton Road Bridge to the foot of the Curdworth flight and Kingsbury Water Park, so left just after eight. We expected the short moorings to be pretty busy here, though when we arrived a bit before half ten, there was only one other boat tied.

Before that, we'd stopped at Peel's Wharf to water. That's the only service available there now, since the much lamented loss of the CRT office. Before, there was the full range of customer services except pump out there. A rather tatty notice cable-tied to a fence indicated that services were available in Fazeley Mill marina, so having made it round the junction with Sheila on the helm, we stopped on the towpath outside the marina.

The services consist of a) the water point on the towpath and b) access through a gate to a couple of skips in the marina. There's no recycling and I suppose there must be an Elsan sluice somewhere, but if the gate is locked out of hours, you're stuffed, basically. In general, I'm a supporter of CRT, but this is a disgraceful reduction in amenities for the licence paying boater.

It's even worse if you are staying on the Coventry, as the next rubbish point will be at Grendon, at the foot of Atherstone. That's a long, long way from Fradley, CRT.

Rant over.

Arriving at Kingsbury, I took the tiller to make a complete hot malted drink of winding. In my defence, the winding hole cannot be seen from the stern of the boat even when the bow is level with it, and it's very square and narrow. It took me two goes to get Sanity Again round and even then I had to have a lot of help from the traditional bow thruster, i.e. Sheila and 14 foot of ash pole.

Having got turned, we reversed onto the moorings, tying 60' from the other boat. There's room for four average boats here – if full, you can either lock up and tie in the long pound above the bottom lock, or head back towards Fazeley, past the huge length of soft edge now becoming overgrown with reeds and tie beyond.

We've had a walk up to lock 9 to check out the Dog and Doublet and have put in some solid work this afternoon cleaning the boat inside and out to remove all the straw dust from yesterday.



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hope you've e mailed C&RT with your opinions really services.
If we all complain, maybe something will change.
Rog
nb Paneke