Thursday 30th May
Blimey, it has been wet again today! We didn’t leave Polesworth until 9 am in the vain hope that by the time we got to Atherstone Locks it would have abated. Wrong! We arrived at the bottom of the locks at 10 am and it was raining harder than ever. There were 2 boats (both hire) in front of us and by the time we got in to the first lock there were several boats behind us. It usually takes us about 2 hours to do this flight but today it took nearly 3 hours.
It did stop raining just as we entered the top lock, deep joy! There was a certain amount of chaos at the top with boats waiting on the lock approach, under the bridge, the other side of the bridge and on the water point as well. We winkled our way through this lot and found a free mooring fairly near the bridge so we pulled in.
We walked in to Atherstone and went to the shops and then had a rather substandard pint of Greene King IPA in The Red Lion Hotel. We soon decamped to The Market Tavern where we had some rather better beer and a nice chat with the barman who was very enthusiastically promoting his pub, bless.
When we got back we decided not to stop at Atherstone, the moorings were ok but we fancied something a bit more rural. We travelled another mile and a half, during which time we had a cup of tea, ate a whole packet of Coop Almond Pastries between us (yum) and skillfully avoided a sunken boat (which was there last week) and are now moored between bridges 35 and 34 in a lovely spot. We have once again set a trend because we were the first ones here and now there are 4 of us!
Ken has been fishing this evening, for the first time in ages because the weather has been so grim and the evenings so cold. There are a couple of photos of his best ones in the gallery.
Tomorrow we are going to Hawkesbury.
