No blog posts for the last two nights. We have been doing some long days to make up some time, so evenings have been more about snoozing in the armchair than blogging.
Friday was mainly the Atherstone Flight on the Coventry Canal. Yesterday, was Fradley Junction, Great Hayward and the return to the Trent and Mersey, not as many locks but quite a few miles. Today was fairly frequent locks, and getting through a very busy Stone. We are now moored up just past Barlaston. We originally thought we might sample Neil Morrisey’s Plume of Feathers at Barlsaton. But we’ve decided to go with home-made lasagne instead, a far superior choice according to Chef Heather.
There have been a lot more boats about in the last few days. That has made the locks a bit easier, as there are usually more people around to help. Which is good, because Heather has been banned from getting off the boat since she completely messed her knee up at the top of the Atherstone flight.
Here is our pictorial record of the last 3 days.
Interesting Boats
Interesting architecture
Sunsets – At Last
Shortly after starting out this morning, we passed Neil Morrissey’s Plume of Feathers pub in Barlaston. We may be sampling it on the way back. 
We reached the top of the Meaford Flight and started down. Finally we started to meet some other boats, one going down in front of others and swapping over with a stream of boats coming up. The Meaford flight begins the decent through Stone, the locks coming regularly through the town. Before the next to last lock, we passed an old warehouse for Joules Stone Ales. What is the link between the unit of energy and beer? Turns out it is a family link. There are two arms of the Joule family, both involved in brewing, and the other, one based in Salford, included James Prescott Joule, the physicist who the standard unit of energy is named after.The Stone arm of the family ran a popular brewery, but it was eventually bought by Bass, and it fell out of favour and became a dormant brand. More recently, Molson Coors, who now own the brand have begun to revive it, to capitalise on the popularity of craft beer.
