Well that didn’t go to plan. No post yesterday because not much happened. That’s not true. Stuff happened. Just not the stuff we wanted to happen. We chugged on to the end of the Ashby past the Globe Inn that we didn’t have dinner in and through the Snarestone Tunnel. We got rid of some rubbish, made a donation to the Ashby Canal Society, who maintain an information point there, and then we turned and went back through the tunnel, and 2 minutes later the battery charging warning lamp and buzzer came on. Last time this happened, the alternator belt had snapped. So I thought the same thing had happened again. We pulled over and then discovered it was not that simple. I exhausted all the checks I could do and was beginning to suspect the alternator had packed in. So, at 11:30am, we called out River Canal Rescue, the canal equivalent of the RAC or AA. They got to us around 6pm, I’m afraid I don’t cope well with waiting to find out what’s wrong with the boat. 

RCR diagnosed a loose alternator belt, tightened it, started the engine and, like magic, it was charging again. So we decided to move on for another hour, mainly to get away from being in the middle of a fishing match.

Of course the alternator was just playing tricks on us, and it decided to pack up completely about 30 minutes later. So we limped on to Shackerstone to moor for the night and put in another call to RCR.

Thankfully Steve from RCR turned up at 11am the next morning with a shiny new alternator, which he fitted in double quick time. The only issue was that the new alternator is a standard one, and not directly compatible with our original battery management system. I am having to get used to how the batteries charge without a battery management system. Having said that, despite having no battery charging for over 36 hours, they were fully charged after 4 hours of running. Perhaps we didn’t really need the system anyway.

We are now roughly a day behind schedule. So, we pushed on through this afternoon, back down the Ashby towards Marston Junction and the Coventry Canal. After a brief shower, we were treated to a sunny if blustery afternoon. At bridge 23, we stopped again at the farm shop to get the sausages we missed on the way up, and some bread, and some milk, and some rather good steak.

We managed to get through Hinckley and the only example of rampant commercialisation on the Ashby, before stopping to eat that nice steak.