Rainy day at Alrewas

It was a day for a lazy start and then mostly lurking indoors as heavy rain showers came and went. My blood test at 9.20 was required to be after a 14 hour fast, so I stayed in bed for as long as possible to try to forget the lack of breakfast.

Fortunately, things were running to time at the surgery, so I was back out by half past and tearing open the wrapper of the chewy bar I'd put in my pocket. I thought passers by were looking at me a bit oddly, when I realised I was making a noise a bit like a cat with a bowl of meat in jelly as I scoffed it, mmmm…..yum yum…….mmmm...

/blush

I'd bought a paper on the way of course, so the day passed pleasantly enough, between that and browsing the web and the like. Sheila spotted an unusual duck swimming along and managed to get a photo of it:

The beak looks tattooed

You do see some very odd mallard crosses around here, especially up at Fradley.

In the afternoon we got togged up and walked down to the river lock to check on the state of things there. The river's come up a bit with all the rain, but is still well down in the green. We estimated the flow at between 2 and 3 mph, and boats were moving on it without difficulty. It didn't seem to rise at all during the twenty minutes we were there.

We'll head that way ourselves in the morning; we plan to do the run to Mercia in one move.