Well,I didn’t get my meal at The Swan( mucky duck), warpaint on and reasonable clean tshirt and trousers, but about 100 bikers and their shiny steeds beat us to it.  We had a walk up to the pub anyway, just to admire the bikes.  There were some monster machines, and worth a great deal of money.  So back to Trundle for……….beans on toast.

Thursday night stopped at Polesworth,  not very inspiring,.  Friday we did the slow old Atherstone flight of locks in 2.5 hrs.  not bad, seeing as they are a slow fill, and we were going up them.  We were also following 2 old folks, but we got along fine, and then loads of boats started coming down, which made it a lot easier for us. 

However getting to Atherstone was not without incident.

We saw a bit of canal rage .

For some reason known only to himself, a NB decided to stop at the bridge to let Trundle through.  Trundle was quite some way back( I was walking Finlay on the towpath), so the  NB should have kept on coming.  But he didn’t, and he started bellowing to Mick “ COME ON ! COME ON!”.  Now , it’s a wee bit noisy at the back standing over the engine, so Mick would  never have heard him anyway, and was idling the engine waiting.

 Another NB was coming up too fast behind The Bellower, who had now picked up some muck in his prop, and it had cut out.  Mick came through the bridgehole, Finlay and I got on, pretty smartly, and left the 2 blokes facing off to each other, as the 2^nd boat had almost run into the  back of the 1^st.  Loads of angry glares etc.  hey ho.

So a quick wine top up from Atherston.  Bit of a run down town. And spotted a nice country mooring for this evening.

 Trundle's big sister ( Riverweed).

 Our silver wedding rose from Chris and Mike in Yorkshire. 

  Now, is this a "sheepheap", or a "snuggle" of sheep.  Its so hot, is this their way of keeping cool????