Marine Cruises canal holidays on the Coventry Canal & Ashby Canal

Canal Holidays on the Coventry Canal & Ashby Canal

A cruise down the Coventry canal possibly with a detour onto the ashby canal, makes a great holiday through rural surroundings. The Coventry Canal was once a busy canal serving the many collieries of the Warwickshire coalfields, now landscaped around Nuneaton and Bedworth. It is only on the edge of Coventry that you now meet modern industry.

The Coventry Canal takes us through Hopwas Wood and Tamworth, before climbing the 11 attractive locks to Atherstone. Atherstone was once a centre for the hat industry, sadly has now gone, but this Victorian town is still worth visiting.

At Marston Junction you can branch off to explore the lock free Ashby canal, as far as the current limit of restoration at Snarestone. You can visit the Bosworth Battlefield site and exhibition, which shows how Richard III lost the decisive battle in the ‘Wars of the Roses’ in 1485 (“A horse, a horse, my Kingdom for a horse” and all that!) and the restored Battlefield Line railway is close by.

Hawkesbury Junction is the junction with the Oxford Canal. ‘Sutton Stop’ is the local name for the area, the Sutton family being lock keepers here for over half the 19th century. The collection of waterway buildings is now a conservation area and the Greyhound pub a popular watering hole!

Continuing down the canal you can moor very close to the centre of Coventry in the restored canal basin. Here there are craft shops and restaurants and it is a very short walk to the famous Cathedrals.

 

Coventry & Ashby Canal facts…

Runs from Fradley Junction near Lichfield to Coventry, although a short stretch above Fazely Junction is actually part of the Birmingham & Fazeley Canal.
Junctions Fradley with the Trent & Mersey Canal, (Huddlesford with the under restoration Lichfield Canal), Fazeley with the Birmingham & Fazeley Canal, Marston with the Ashby Canal and Hawkesbury with the Oxford Canal.
Length 27miles
Locks 13