Tuesday 10th and Wednesday 11th May
Tuesday we awoke to rain as forecast. Thinking about it over breakfast and as the rain wasn’t too hard at that time we decided to leave Snarestone and travel to Market Bosworth as planned. Ken was ready to leave long before me so I was soon out there casting off in my pjs in the rain! Above and beyond the call of duty I thought!
The rain had worsened by the time I finished my ablutions so I skulked about in doors during the trip hoovering, mopping and wiping my shelves.
After 2.5 soggy hours (well, for Ken anyway) we arrived at Market Bosworth and moored up. There was no let up in the rain so we donned waterproofs to walk in to town. This is about a mile (uphill) and took about 20 minutes.
We did as much shopping as we could manage in two rucksacks as we were running desperately low on provisions, then went to The Red Lion. I was delighted to find my favourite beer, Sneck Lifter, was on, yum.
Another damp walk back to the boat was on the cards as it was still raining when we left the pub. We battened down the hatches when we got back and as it had turned a bit chilly I lit the fire! And that was that for the day.
Today we awoke to – yes rain again! Once again we decided to move on and this time travelled to Stoke Golding about 5 miles from Market Bosworth. On the way we stopped at Sutton Cheney Wharf for water etc and Alan on Florence E was moored there so we had a chat with him and Bracken, his dog.
Arriving at Stoke Golding we decided not to moor on the off side 48 hour moorings with everyone else but stopped just short of them and moored on the towpath side instead. Alan had been moored here when we went past on the way down. It is his blue boat you can see in the photo I took of the view from the Dog and Hedgehog the other day.
After mooring up we had lunch then went off to the village. This proved to be a rather wet and muddy walk over the farm bridge and across the field. We popped in the shop for a paper and then went to The George and Dragon to reacquaint ourselves with the Church End Brewery beers!
And jolly nice they were too. We had the Stout Coffin and Ken also had a What The Fox’s Hat. While we were in there a load of homemade sausage rolls the size of rolls of lino, scotch eggs as big as footballs and pork pies appeared on the bar. We had a hard job talking ourselves out of having any I can tell you!
We eventually decided that as we had had lunch it would not be a good idea and if we took some home for tomorrow we would only eat them later on this evening. I had spotted a custard tart in the shop when I went in for the paper and said I would get that on the way back for this afternoon’s tea. However I was thwarted by the fact that the shop closed at 1-15pm for lunch and was not due to reopen until 2-45pm! We had to make do with a jam sandwich with our tea.
Finally it has stopped raining and Ken is now fishing for the first time for ages. Tomorrow we are heading for Bulking Bridge again as we need to go to Nuneaton for more supplies.
