Autumn on the cut

As we sit for another evening curled by the wood-burning stove I look back on a chilly day of moving.


We had to do a small repair job on the boat before setting off today. This involved screwing in the pump-out connector on the gunwhale of the boat, as we have noticed the fragile looseness of this part and possible effects upon suction. And so we left Hartshill in search of a nearby winding point to turn our beautiful 65ft of steel 360degrees round. We passed back through Hartshill boatyard and going towards Nuneaton came to a maria in about 2miles. We did the do's and with Leigh's skill of manouvering her, did our second 360degrees in the day and set off again a little lighter and with less of a list.


As we came back through Hartshill, I jumped off to do the vehicle relay of car and boat. As I did, I took the opportunity to capture the area as Leigh took our boat through...





And I looked at the historic environment and architecture of Hartshill boat yard, such as the crane, clocktower and waterpoint.










We are back in Atherstone, where I met Leigh to help moor up, at the top lock so can look forward to the move down the hill tomorrow.

What's all the racket about?

As of late on The Kite Experiment, we have steadily been moving along the Coventry Canal and blowing away the cobwebs. We are moored at Hartshill Boat yard a stone's throw from local family. We have good neighbours and vast fields surrounding us.

Projects have been progressing on the boat as we are looking into a new battery system of 6volt Traction batteries and a regulator so that we no-longer have to spend evenings illuminated by candle-light and going to bed early. We have painted the side hatches a lovely pea green colour and have cut and sanded the wooden inserts for the interior side. When the rain stops we will be able to glue the wood in place, fix up the beading and varnish them.

Wonderful news is that I have successfully secured a place on a writers residency in Shropshire run by Arvon. This will enable me to develop the poetry I have been working on of late and share with other writers etc. Horrah! I can't wait!

And now we are looking towards moving to Brimingham for christmas time which should take about 5 days of journey time so when I come back from Shropshire all our of ink, we will be thinking of moving on.

Continue the noise, noise, noise as the generator runs to charge up the starter battery that has run flat again.

Night move and next day

Having encountered some towpath signs identifying that the area we were in was for a maximum of 48hours of mooring we thought it time to move. We were unsure if these were rogue signs as we had been offered an inkling that some further down Atherstone were (some boaters are grumpy enough to bother to print out signs and nail them up!). So even after a long day in the Birmingham area we got home for just after 7, it has been 50hours, so not to upset BW we pulled up the mooring lines and set off.

Only thing was, now that the nights are drawing in, we were soon enough moving through a dark air and even darker liquid.


Leigh managed to get us through bridges even without a working headlight (not a good idea!). It was so dark that we had no choice but to find the first available area to moor up. I lept off into the darkness with the middle rope and Leigh slowed her down. We hammered in the pins with the useless wind-up torch and got indoors to the candle light. The batteries are not at their best and Leigh has been doing much research into Traction batteries and the fooling of boaters into 'maintenance free leisure batteries'. We now have two 6volt tractions in the post, horray!


And thus we were fortunate to be unharmed by our very ill planned brief move. And the next day as I left the boat at the crack of dawn I didn't notice the huge overhanging bush obstructing the canal along with us moored opposite it! So Leigh was grumbed at by other boaters and bless him, pulled the boat along (stallion style) to a more accessible area in the pissing rain.

And see what we are looking out to now... (I feel luckier than ever!)

Atherstone Locks

About a week ago, after our rather extended mooring days inbetween Atherstone Locks, we had decided it was time enough to move. We set off up the flight of locks continuing along the Coventry Canal towards Nuneaton. We said goodbye to the local goat, and geese, tucked Delia up inside the boat and I set off ahead with the windlass in my hand whilst Leigh took the tiller.


It is a glorious route, under red-ivy bridges, with trees lining the path up hill. The old locks are slow to fill so there was little rushing to be done, mind you it did surprise me when one couple were commenting on the time lost (12 minutes to be precise) when another set of boaters didn't leave a lock in their favour. Ah we can all grumble but sometimes things are best left to drift away.

As I watched our home slowly rise in the locks I thought how grand an idea that our entire home moves with us. An obvious thought but one that really got me this day.


We had completed all the Atherstone Locks by late afternoon and were happy to say a farewell to them as the next stretch is a straight run, lock free.


We pulled up for the necessities, not as easy a job as it sounds, when filling up water, Leigh had to hold the hose pipe against the dribbling tap as we didn't have a connector for it. And manoeuvring our 65ft steel tube to access said water point and disposal area was all down to Leigh's tiller tricks, not at all an easy endeavour.




And so we passed Atherstone's bridge 41 underneath the aptly named Bridge and Barge pub passing this building...



And moored up for the night.