Back at Alrewas, which has a lot of pubs...

20th & 21st October

Yesterday morning dawned kind of windy, with a suspicion of rain in the air. We pulled across the cut onto one of the system's slowest water points and started to fill the tank. We'd had to wait for a Canaltime to do so first but they didn't take long. They must have had very little topping up to do. Whilst waiting, I started the washing machine running, but had to stop it when it got to the rinse cycle. The tap was filling the tank so slowly, we'd have been here half the morning, as it wasn't replacing the water faster than the machine was using it.

Finally it was all done, and we set off for Alrewas. No sooner had we got going, than the heavens opened. Earlier on I'd taken a phone call from Carolann Richardson on Autumn Years, so we knew that they were planning to stay in Alrewas until after lunch, to allow the forecast bad weather to blow through.

Arriving at the top of Bagnall, we found plenty of room to moor. It was necessary to change out of our wet clothes before we set off to find Autumn Years, which we did tied between the water point and the lock. It's a couple of years since we've seen them, so it was really good to catch up over first coffee and then a glass of wine.

Graham then suggested that a pub lunch might be good, so we adjourned to investigate The Crown. The food here was certainly better value than the Willie; £4.95 for two courses. We all had the excellent leek and potato soup, then the other three tried the roast beef whilst I went for the turkey. The main courses weren't anything special, though the beef was better than the turkey by all accounts, and the veg were clearly fresh and freshly cooked.

After lunch we went back to Sanity for a cup of tea, and then returned to the red wine, as it was getting a bit late in the day. As Graham and Carolann were leaving, having decided to postpone further boat movement until today, Elanor arrived for a natter.

The rest of the evening was rather quiet (just as well, I hear you say). The only other thing of note was a curious incident last thing. We were in bed, drinking final cups of tea and reading, when the stern mooring chain suddenly rattled, as if the mooring had drawn tight.

Where we're tied above Bagnall isn't the kind of area where you'd expect trouble, but I went and had a peer out of the various doors and hatches just to be sure. There was nothing to be seen, and no flow of water past the boat; I'd wondered if someone was filling the lock below us, and so had drawn the boat forward.

In any event, it had to be left as just one of those things. Sheila speculated this morning that a fox might have put a paw on the stern to sniff around, rattled the chain and then made off in a fright. It's as good an explanation as any.

Today, the weather couldn't have been more different. Instead of wet, windy but mild weather, we had bright sun, a brisk breeze and a sharp touch of frostiness to the air. It promised ideal walking weather.

It was cool enough to run the Eberspacher again first thing, which once more performed as if it had never misbehaved in its life.

We went on the Willie Walk, with me sporting my nice new gps receiver. On this occasion it wasn't needed for navigation purposes, since we were in a led group, but it did mean that I could check the total length of the walk, and record the route we'd used as a saved track should we want to do it again by ourselves sometime.

We lunched in the Willie again. For reasons best known to themselves, they don't normally offer baked potatoes, but do so on a Tuesday as a favour to the Willie Walkers. Sheila tried one, and it was very good. They had a choice of four fillings, and at £2.95 it was good value. I had today's special, which was roast beef and Yorkshire pudding in a bap, with chips.

This was less successful; the beef was a couple of good meaty slices, but very chewy, and where last week the chips had been one of the best bits of the offering, this week they were completely different. They were dark brown, thin, stringy things, slathered in salt, like some desperately overcooked McDonald's fries.

When I commented on this to the barmaid when she came to clear the plates, she just said "Oh, they're not our regular chips". I mean, I could see that; what I was looking for was an apology for inflicting them on me.

As we were getting ready to leave, the young man who is the chef (I nearly said who calls himself the chef) had come out into the bar area to play the games machine. He's a pleasant chap, but was dressed in modern grunge style of scruffy T-shirt and old jeans. I think my message to the new managers of the Willie is "Sharpen up, get more professional, or you'll lose a lot of trade."

We ambled back to Sanity for a post prandial doze, and to check email and so on. Elanor is going to turn up soon. She wants to take us out for a meal sometime, but it's hard to know where we should go: maybe to the Swan at Fradley.