What a nice day

We've had an excellent day here in Alrewas, combined with a walk up the towpath to Fradley to spend some time  with John and Nev on Waimaru.

After a lazy start, we ambled into the village to get some shopping, including some meat from Coates the butcher, and I collected a prescription, previously ordered on the web, from the pharmacy. I had a jolly chat with the pharmacist, sorry "medication review", about all the side effects I'm not getting from the cocktail of drugs a generous country keeps feeding me, and then we wandered back to the boat.

The C&RT guys were taking the padlock off the lock gates, the level having just about dropped back down into the amber. the river has stayed open all day, and since the forecast rain was nothing like as heavy as previous precipitations, it may well now remain so for the weekend, which will be good news to a lot of folk, I guess.

At lunch time we headed off up the cut on foot to Fradley and have just returned from a very pleasant afternoon. A certain amount of alcohol was consumed, together with a superb lunch, and many aspects of the world put to rights, or at least slagged off in an amiable fashion.

We'll now have a quiet evening in the sun which is shining quite warmly upon us all. The batteries are still well charged, thanks to the solar panel, so I'm just running the Hurricane for a bit to get some hot water.

Tomorrow, we'll take the boat up to Fradley for a couple of days. Elanor plans to leave Sally with us for a week, and Fradley is a good rendezvous for her.