Jam Hole Run, and a Broken Throttle Cable

26th - Clifton Nr Rugby to Hillmorton, Oxford Canal - 1 mile, 3 locks

We were lucky while in Clifton the other day, it was the day of the Jam Hole Run, a yearly re enactment of a trip from Atherstone to Brentford. The Jam Hole Run was cargoes of coal up from Atherstone to the Kearley and Tongue Jam Factory. Notably Raymond and Nutfield came past us as well as other old working boats, some having actually been 'doing' the run with their cargoes for many years before trade stopped in 1970. It was Ron with Duke that came by first, he looked as though he was thoroughly enjoying himself as usual. Ron sure does do some milage with Duke!!

The pics of all of the boats are in the album, and if anybody would like the larger originals of any, please let me know. All the pics in the album are a reduced size for the web. I thought I might do a page about the Jam Hole Run and include all the pics and the names of the boats that took part this year.

This particular picture caught my eye, I could really imagine this young man looking and acting the way he did in the pic some 50 years ago!

So, what a glorious day today, the sun was warm and it was very calm. Not looking forward to the next few days, the weatherman says gales and rain. We have decided to stay at Hillmorton until it has passed.

I managed to break the throttle cable the other day just as we were mooring at Clifton, I hadn't like the way that I kept having to push the lever much further than I was used to with the old engine, and I don't think it particularly liked the way it was being treated either!

It was quite funny getting from Clifton to Hillmorton yesterday, there was me on the tiller and poor Vic was down in the engine bay working the throttle! Chas and Ann on Moore 2 Life went off in front of us warning those approaching that the following boat was limited with stop and start motion. Well that cheered those that passed all beaming from ear to ear, no doubt looking at the name of our boat!

Barry at Hillmorton Boats fitted a new cable after fetching one from Braunston, while we waited for a Tescos order to arrive having arranged that last week for here for this morning.

Autumn has certainly arrived, and I snapped the first real Autumn pic of the year while walking with Lucy just to the north of Hillmorton, a beautiful area here, and came across a sort of dump of bricks and soil, maybe some type of recycling area, and was amazed at the beautiful flowers in such an odd place, just had to try and capture how strange it was to see flowers seemingly determined to survive in such a landscape.

Mooring at the top of the locks, we spied a tree down in the copse close to the boat and went to investigate. We are using too much coal at the moment, wood has certainly not been in abundance the last month, and we really could do with some, this lot seemed ideal, certainly enough to last three weeks if not a month.

For sure it was a chain saw job on the other side of the heavily overgrown barbed wire fence, so wandered off down the towpath in the hope that the man using a chainsaw about a quarter of a mile away would know the owner of the copse..... Luckily it was the owner himself clearing some fallen timber, and yes we could help ourselves to all we wanted.

An hour and a half later the roof was yet again covered in nice big logs, ah now that looks more like autumn on No Problem now.