90_Carry on Up the Ashby

17th March 2020

We have spent the last couple of days catching up with some boat jobs whilst moored between bridges 2 and 3 on the Ashby Canal. We managed to clean the towpath side of the boat and checked out what painting we needed to do.  We had a bit of a clean to the bow of the boat as during the winter period it had become a bit of a store for bags of coal.  
We take a cruise up to Bridge 6, the industry and suburbanism of the Coventry canal has been replaced by peaceful farms and fields. The only evidence of another world being the tall electricity pylons carrying overhead power lines criss crossing the landscape. Here we stay for a couple of days before moving onto Hinckley.

20th March
The weather remains cloudy and overcast and still really cold, we cruise up to Hinckley where we fill our water tank at the tap by bridge 15 before mooring just beyond Bridge 17 where there are some visitor moorings to pick up some provisions.  We walk the mile into town where we find a Lidl to pick up some supplies. Over the last few days the Covid 19 virus  has been accelerating and many people have been bulk buying on many items like toilet rolls, pasta, rice and soaps for when they have to self isolate.  There hasn't been any hand sanitisers in the shops for the last couple of weeks either so I really wasn't expecting to find much in the shops.  Surprisingly we did manage to get most of what we needed to feed ourselves for about 7 days and with a planned visit to the farm shop by bridge 23 we would hopefully extend that to about 10 days.  I do sometimes find it to be a bit of a struggle to fit in supplies for much more than 10 days.