Last night we reached the last turning point on the Ashby and turned around. The canal used to go further, but subsidence due to coal mining meant that the last third of the canal had to be abandoned. However, the local canal enthusiasts are a determined bunch and the last winding hole had a permanent rummage sale to help raise the hundreds of millions of pounds that will be required to reopen the missing bits. They have some other sources of income as well, and there are rumors that excavation will start this coming winter.

We moored for the night opposite a field of cows and when we were looking for them this morning to log the First Cows Of The Day, Paula also spotted a buzzard on a distant tree.

As we were leaving it circled over us looking for prey. I pointed at the nearby ducklings but it ignored me.

In Shackerstone there is a mound by the pool.

It is the remains of a motte and bailey castle. According to Wikipedia, during the second world war an air raid shelter was dug into it, and the hidden bunker still contains a rocking chair. Why, Wikipedia, why, of all the things you could choose to write about Shackerstone, did you choose to promulgate that local legend? Why not tell us the names of the barmaids at the Rising Sun, or the fact the that red telephone booth still has a working telephone in it?

I probably shouldn’t call attention to it or one of the Wikipedia editors will remove it in the interests of promoting accuracy and boredom.

We moored up in Shenton, an affluent seeming village.

The church is Victorian but has a nice monument to some of the local squires.

Note the details.

One of the farms has been converted into a huge multi-dealer antique and junk shop. There are endless toby jugs, glass paperweights, toby jugs, china figurines, toby jugs, walking sticks, and toby jugs. I decided against buying the bagpipes.

The best find was accidental: a skeleton leaf that someone had used as a bookmark in the Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse.

I left it there for someone else to discover.