Coventry Way

Photograph Quiz:

Photo no. 52:- The Coventry Half Marathon passed down the Lane where our country house is situated. Both my daughters were quite upset when they passed the Lodge at the end of the drive and saw that granny and granddad had come out to cheer them on. Both girls thought that the wrinklies would have made a bit more effort to live up to the family motto. What is the family motto and what does the family crest look like?

Dear Blog,

I hope you are well and have recovered from recent the trauma, if you know what I mean. Nod, nod, wink, wink. Not to worry but do take care!!!!! As you said ‘You can foolda people some of the time, but there is always a clever dick waiting round da corner.’

Did a five milerish yesterday and was late back. Set off from Hawkesbury Junction near Bedworth in Warwickshire and did a loop which was basically along the Oxford Canal and then the Coventry Canal. Hawkesbury is a canal junction, notable because of the single lock there … the lock enables the canal barges to rise a magnificent total height of eighteen inches, I kid you not. One foot six. Forty five centimetres. Depending on which reference you wish to rely upon, it seems that one of the surveyors of either the Coventry Canal Company or the Oxford Canal Company made a tinsey winsey cockup with his calculations when the canals were being built and which were supposed to meet  …ooops, the water level of one canal was eighteen inches higher than the other. Or I may have got that wrong; it could have been that the water level of one was eighteen inches lower than the other. Part of the problem being that the calculators in those days were not quite as good as they are today … you just couldn’t get the batteries; and Babbage didn’t do much to help, all those cogs and things. I think the best model on the market was the i-bacus? Anyway, one of the surveyors collected his P45*.

 I travelled up stream along the Oxford Canal to Sowe Common, very pleasant except for the fact that the canal runs alongside the M6 for two miles and you are deafened from the continual roar of thousands of cars and lorries rushing as fast as possible between here and there. From the Common, the route is across the country until you meet up with the Coventry Way, which is a forty mile designated footpath which circumnavigates the city, keeping to established rights of way in the countryside but never being more than five miles from the city centre. Interestingly there were quite a few oak trees along the way …. I got to thinking; how do the clever clog naturalists know that squirrels forget where they have left their stores of nuts? Has any one asked the squirrels or have the naturalists just made that assumption? Perhaps the squirrels are far cleverer than the naturalists give them credit for .... The squirrels lay down plenty of nuts for the winter in different places so that nosey naturalists can’t find them. If the winter is mild, all the stocks are not needed, some stores are surplus to requirements. That being the case, because the squirrels are much cleverer than the nosey naturalists, they set up squirrel working parties in the Spring and expose the nuts just enough for a foraging naturalist to stumble across a store ‘by chance’. The noise the squirrels make in the Spring, is not a mating call as the naturalists would have us believe, it’s the squirrels high in the trees laughing their nuts off at all the dopey naturalists poking about on the ground below!!!

Nearing Bedworth, where I used to live in a caravan for six or seven years, the path returns to the Coventry Canal back to the start. In my first job in the Midlands, I had the bright idea to run back home from work along the Coventry Canal towpath as a pleasant change from the fume filled roads. In Yorkshire, some of my regular routes took in parts of the towpath of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal; the paths were always reasonably maintained. What a shock I had on my first attempt to run home alongside the water. It was mostly in the water. The paths were in an appalling state of disrepair, often disappearing without trace for long stretches. I soon gave up. Trying to run across country back to my caravan was no better. Foot paths no longer existed, or they had disappeared beneath the vegetation, or they were blocked with brambles, occasionally barbed wire. The farmers alleged trespass by me, using guns and dogs as a deterrent, I kid you not. As it was my word against the farmer with no witnesses, the police were powerless to take any action on my behalf. I was quicker than Pavlov’s doggies in learning and very quickly confined my running activities to the fume filled roads.

                Colin

PS  Blog .. if you get in touch with any of your 48 foreign friends, do point out to them that the P45 is the official document you get when you get the chop from your job and it enables you to get help from that nice Mr Cameroon to have a month or two sunbathing.