On our way home

A couple more books to add to the list - but at least that post stepped in yesterday when I couldn't get a signal. June's boring waterways picture will, however, have to wait. We're well and truly on the way back to Kings Bromley now. We stopped in Atherstone last night, feeling completely worn out as the exertions and excitements of the last week caught up. However, a bit of a wash and a cup of tea perked me up and we set off for the drink I'd promised myself at the Market Tavern. This was a bit of a disappointment though; while still a nice enough pub, gone were the Church End Brewery beers. Haveing been too exhausted to make sandwiches, we'd checked out the various takeaways on the way up the High Street (Atherstone has loads of fast food joints, and about eleven pubs. I don't know what the population is, but it's certainly well-served) and settled on the Raj Mahal, where the man who took our order was somewhat unenthusiastic, but the food, when we returned to collect it and served it up on returning to the boat was super, and exactly what was needed. Lacking an outdoor taple, Jim took the cabin slide off and laid it on the grass to provide a base for our repast.

While waiting for the food, we completed a survey of Atherstone High Street in preparation for a shopping trip this morning. There is one shop, called Toolbox, which looks tiny from the outside, but when it was open, and its wares spread across the pavement, turned out to be an Aladdin's cave of oldfashioned hardware; still tiny inside, a warren around which only one-way perambulation was possible, where we were able to furnish ourselves with fuse wire, paraffin, net curtain wire and various other arcane essentials. Atherstone also boasts a few charity shops, where we were quite successful, acquiring (ahem) a set of kitchen scales (to take home, I hasten to add), a lemon squeezer, some shorts and a brand new pair of boots for Jim, a 1953 coronation mug (I have an Edward VIII one, so now I just need George VI) and a couple of books.

But what of the boating? Well, it's becoming less eventful, in terms of groundings and collisions, and consequently even more enjoyable. Met a couple of people today who knew or knew of the boat, including one man whose parents had steered it in BW days. We didn't leave Atherstone until one (oh yes, we got pies too of course) and have stopped just short of Hudddlesford Junction, leaving a relatively short run to Kings Bromley tomorrow. Then tidying up, packing and.... Well, it doesn't bear thinking about really.