Do you think this needs reporting?



You can see the mattress on the fire. The sofa ( looked to be leather type ) was already engulfed in flames

 I took these pictures at number 5 lock on the Atherstone flight. I watched as mattresses, sofa,s and furniture were taken out of the horse box and thrown onto the fire. The pony in front was beside himself, tearing round and round its enclosure obviously frightened to death. Surly burning this type of material is an environment hazard. The fumes given off would no doubt be toxic. Thankfully the wind was blowing the smoke away from the canal but someone somewhere would have had the fumes. So the question is, should I report it or is it to late?

There has been quite a bit to blog about today. Ian went to empty the loo at Hawksbury Junction while I took the boat through the stop lock. He forgot the BW key so I just gave him the engine keys which also had the BW key attached. As I was closing the gate the engine started coughing and spluttering and almost stalled. Black smoke was coming from the exhaust and I was very relieved to see Ian return. He asked me why I hadn't turned the engine off and I said because he had the keys!!! I could have pushed the stop button but that still wouldn't have shut it of completely. He stopped the engine and then turned it on again and off course it worked fine. That's not quite the end of the tale. When we moored up, this evening, at the other side of Polegate Ian was very surprised to see that the batteries hadn't been charging. Makes me wonder if there still is something not quite right!!

Jade then decided she wanted a walk. This picture looks as if we have allowed her to go off on her own. I appreciate that some boaters do do this and many moons ago, in our hiring days, we also used to let the dogs off by themselves but that was before picking up after your dog was so important. I would never do that now and I hope no other boaters would do such a thing these days.



Ian waiting for her to catch up.

Once we reached Nuneaton the rubbish started to appear. Someone has been busy hauling all these bikes out. I wonder if the ' little darlings' will throw them all back in????



Looks as if all the stolen bikes ended up in the cut.




and shopping trolleys.


This was a sad sight to see. We had arrived at Mancetter to an area which I would have assumed to be okay and, on the linear moorings, this boat had its window broken. None of the other boats had been touched and no boards were across any of the windows. I expect this was once a safe area but it doesn't appear to be any more.



The boat looks in a bit of a state but it was still lived in. The chimney had smoke coming from it.

 Then maybe a few yards further, as we came round a bend, in front of us was a spaniel swimming. The owner was totally unconcerned that the dog could have gone under our prop. One day the inevitable might happen but by that time it will be to late.


Dog swimming on the right of the picture.



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All in all we made excellent progress today. Atherstone flight took us an hour and 45 minutes. I had forgotten just how slow the locks fill!! Our planned mooring tonight would have been below the flight but as it was still early we pushed on to moor the other side of Polegate. One more thing to report. The sunken cruiser by bridge 21on the Coventry, is no longer there. But at bridge 23 a large orange buoy is still floating about and we definitely ran over something. Surly the cruiser hasn't made it all the way from bridge 21 to 23?