Polesworth to Fradley

Saturday 18th August We left at 7am from Polesworth because we had quite a long way to go this weekend. It was drizzling with rain. We cruised through Tamworth, which appeared to be quite a nice town which we weren't expecting, it being on the outskirts of Birmingham. There were 3 locks to go through at Tamworth. I got talking to a man on a boat on his way to Coventry. He said Rugeley is quite a nice place. When we got to Fazeley junction there were some attractive old buildings next to the canal, and while we filled up with water we talked to an old man passing who told us that one was a disused chapel and the other used to be a tape factory. They are listed buildings so will probably be converted into something else eventually. He was a sweet old man with a little dog called Dottie which he carried along in the basket on his bike. He called her his 'babby' - she was a cross between a chihuahua and a border terrier and he had named her after his late wife. He had had dogs all his life and most of them were buried in his garden. He was obviously a bit lonely and stayed chatting for quite a while - a very sweet man. We finished doing our water, cleaned the toilets and threw away our rubbish and carried on. We went through Hopwas and Coton which are very attractive villages. Hopwas has 2 nice pubs. Then we continued past a military firing range in a wooded area. We thought we'd have a break and stop at a pub shown on our map in Whittington but the map let us down again, it has been replaced by a large new house. So we went on to a place called Huddlesford and a pub called The Plough. It was a pub that had recently been done up but nice and busy and the landlord was friendly. I finished his crossword for him. We had a few drinks and did some people-watching then continued on. When we got to Fradley which is near a noisy road but is a nice village, the weather had picked up and was quite hot. We decided to stop in Fradley for the night, and walked into the village in search of a shop and no-one was about except 2 little boys so we asked them. After that some people in a car asked us for directions to the village hall and the funny thing was we had passed it so we knew where it was. We got a couple of things in the shop, went back to the boat and Dale cooked roast beef from the butcher in Polesworth. We had high hopes for it, but it was a bit gristly unfortunately.