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 The
Coventry Canal leaves the Trent & Mersey Canal at Fradley
Junction and runs for 38 miles up 13 locks to Coventry.
It is neither a long nor outstandingly
attractive canal but it was, and still is, an important link
between the northern and southern canal networks, cutting out
the need to lock up to, and then down from, Birmingham. Allow
two days to cruise the canal.
Leaving Fradley Junction and the excellent
Swan Inn the canal first cuts across flat wooded land, passing
an old World War Two airfield, to Tamworth and Fazeley where the
Birmingham & Fazeley Canal goes off to join the Birmingham Canal
System. Spoil heaps from the old coal mining industry soon rear
unusual shapes on the skyline, though much of the mining and
quarrying scars have been quickly covered by landscaping and
wild growth.
Atherstone is a pleasant market town with some
Georgian buildings. Hawkesbury Junction used to be a bustling
canal centre where boat people would take a rare opportunity to
socialise while waiting for their next loads of coal from the
local collieries. There's a stop lock, designed to prevent water
belonging to one canal company being used by an adjoining canal
company, in this case the Oxford Canal Company whose canal
starts here. The Coventry Canal carries on through the suburbs
into Coventry. Atherstone holds a football match on Shrove
Tuesday which follows 12th century rules! Coventry was heavily bombed in WW2 but there
are still many surviving medieval buildings. The famous "new"
Cathedral should be visited and there are a number of
interesting museums.
At the unusual canal junction at
Hawkesbury near Coventry the Oxford Canal
joins the Coventry Canal. The Oxford originally ran parallel
with the Coventry for a few miles towards Coventry but the
junction beneath the elegant cast iron bridge was cut through in
1828 when the Oxford Canal was being shortened by having some of
its tortuous loops cut out. Sutton stop lock, named after its
first lock keeper, is in the distance on the right hand side in
the photo.
This has a very small fall and was built to keep the waters of
the two canals separate.
The
Ashby Canal runs for 22 lock free miles through pleasant
countryside and skirts the War of the Roses Bosworth Battlefield
(1485) on which Richard III was killed.
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The
Coventry Canal forms part of the Leicester Ring, with
the 
