Ashby Canal Terminus to Snarestone Village.

Hi Folks.

Terminus to Snarestone Village 0.75 miles travelled in 15 minutes.

I had such a peaceful nights sleep, there was not a sound. So when I woke at 7am to find Keith climbing over me, so whilst he was in the galley he made us both a cup of tea. Whilst we drank our early morning brew we watch repeats of "Deal or no deal" on Challenge. The program has certainly moved on a lot since the early days.

8.30am I was up, dressed and off the boat with Paddy. It was a lovely start to the day, with a breeze blowing the clouds away. We enjoyed a nice stroll along the towpath, where Black Cattle grazed lazily in the field alongside the canal. Back at the boat, Keith had put my breakfast up, but before I ate Marmite and Paddy got fed, otherwise Marmite would never let me hear the end of it, she is extremely vocal for a tabby cat. With breakfast all done without a murmur from Marmite, I got on with sorting both the fires out. The back cabin fire has to have all the ash raked out, that I lay on top of the wood to keep it in over night, this does have draw backs because the back cabin does get pretty dusty, but it is worth it to keep the fire in, especially once the weather gets very nippy. The saloon stove is much easier as we burn Supertherm, which stays in all day and all night without any trouble and has very little ash. At the moment it is heating the radiator in the bathroom and supplying us with hot water, so it is always a win, win situation when we have this fire going.

Before leaving we emptied the other toilet cassette and got rid of all the rubbish we had collected from the towpath along the way. 9.55am the engine was fired up and we were on our way to Snarestone village. We made our way back through Snarestone Tunnel and moored up in front of Maffi who was out on the towpath with Molly. Once moored up we had a natter to Maffi and I gave Molly one of Paddy's tennis balls, which she was very excited about. After a chat it was time for a coffee for us and Maffi was off up the towpath with Molly.

After coffee we heard Maffi leaving, so we waved him off and wished him a "Happy Christmas", because we may not see him again before the big and expensive day LOL. We then closed the boat up and head off up into Snarestone, which lies over the tunnel. The village appears in the Domesday book as Snarchetone, and was just a piece of ploughed land. The piece of land was held in 1086 by Robert the Dispensator or Robert the Bursar. Robert was steward to William the Conqueror, so its history goes back along way. Apparently during the 13thC the land was passed to the Charnell family who then looked after it for around five centuries. It is then thought that in 1811 the lord of the manor was a Charles Powell Leslie and it then passed on in 1846 to Lady Anna Maria Leslie. The village was very much a farming community, whose crops were mostly wheat and barley. During the 19th C bricks were made and I would imagine some of those bricks were used to build some of the beautiful houses in the village. A coal mine was sunk in 1875 but despite hoping to find some of the black stuff they only found water.

The Globe Inn has been in the village since around 1870, from the sign outside it only opens during the evening, this maybe just a winter thing though. Many, many years ago there used to be four pubs in the village.

This appeared to be the only thatched cottages in the village and they date back to around the 1700's. The village has some stunning Georgian houses, which date back to the 18th C, when the village prospered. There are no shops in the village, but it does have a school which was donated to the village by Mr Thomas Charnells in 1717, originally the school was three cottages. The school has made many changes since then and it is so nice to see a proper village school. It bought back happy memories of my first village school in Hurstbourne Priors. In all Snarestone is a sleepy little village with lots of history.

Back on the boat it was time for a tomato soup lunch, with crusty rolls. I am going to spend the rest of the day resting my Sciatica I think.

Chat soon xx