Wednesday 3 April 2013

Atherstone to Hopwas ... and a dog called Dave

Another icy start. And, look, I'm really sorry about the lack of photos so far. The problem is that we're entertaining guests on board, so I can't seem to find the time to transfer photos from my camera to the computer, and then to this blog. Tomorrow, perhaps!

Did I mention last night's meal? We went to the King's Head on the pound between locks 5 and 6. The bar staff kept shouting at the dog: "Dave! Dave!" and the chips were very overdone. Next time (unlikely) I won't go for the steaks for two with a free bottle of wine for £20. I wouldn't have the wine, anyway. Nevertheless, Jan had a tasty Hunter's Chicken, and the puddings were good. I had bread-and-butter pudding with custard.

Back to today, and one early highlight was Lock 6 of the Atherstone flight. This has a working side pond, and I enjoyed making use of it.

Before that, though, Adrian had left us to cycle back to Nuneaton where he was going to get a train to Ely, from where he was going to cycle 50 miles home.

At Glascote we met our friend David who had walked up from Fazeley with a neighbour's dog. The two Glascote locks are very slow fillers, especially the bottom one. We queued behind two boats for these. Here my brother David (not the friend David) left on his bike to cycle to Tamworth Station for a train to Rugby so he could collect his car from Willoughby to drive it to Hopwas.

We got to Hopwas only half-an-hour or so before David (brother - got it?) arrived by car. We looked round St. Chad's Church, which was open, checked out the two pubs for food, and settled on the Tame Otter.

Most of our party enjoyed their food, but I made a bad choice with the Forestierre Chicken. Hmm.

As we were walking back to the boat we heard the unmistakeable sound of a Bolinder engine approaching. This was powering Greyhound, navigating in the dark towards Fazeley.

And that was the end of another day's cruising, all on the Coventry Canal and Birmingham and Fazeley Canal detached portion). It has again been very sunny, but still with the cold easterly wind.

Photos tomorrow!

3 comments:

Vallypee said...

Pub food seems very adventurous these days! Nice to hear them doing things like bread and butter pudding. Goodness, it's been years since I've had that. Sounds as if you're enjoying the cruising anyway, Halfie. Looking forward to the photos!

Brian and Diana on NB Harnser said...

I hope the wind was in the right direction for his ride home, it hit 38MPH here

Halfie said...

Val, yes, it's good to be cruising again.

Brian, I fear it was against him. We've been battling the wind on Shadow today - it made getting into a couple of locks interesting!