A good fishing session

Ian was sent on a mission this morning to purchase a marrow. Found a recipe for scooping out the middle, stuffing it with mince and baking it in the oven. I'm not a fan of marrow but stuffing it sounded good. As we were still in Atherstone Ian went in search for this veg only to return empty-handed. Hmmm...Now, what shall we have for dinner?

Got underway almost as soon as he stepped foot on board and then made him step of again armed with windlass. He gestured that lock 6 was nearly full and hoped this meant the rest of the 5 locks would also be with us. Apart from having one of the locks emptied moments before we arrived, this proved to be the case.

Saw some weird cloud formations on route. Something to do with wind speed and air currents I think.

Arrived at Polesworth and had to creep past a boater trying to moor as well as trying to avoid an oncoming boat. Channel was so very narrow that I honestly thought we would hit but luckily missed by inches. We were then told that a boat in front of us who had just set off had no reverse. Wasnt long before we caught up and sat behind him for a mile and a half on 600 rpm. No point in trying to get past as we only wanted to go as far as bridge 56 and with him having problems enough, the last thing he would have wanted was hassle from another boater. 40 minutes later we reached the M42 bridge and pulled in.  Having looked in Nicholsons earlier and found a mention of a country park, I just had to go and see.

While I went for a walk, Ian touched up the paintwork yet again.

Not sure what I expected from Pooley Country park, had visions of manicured lawns and lots of different plants and trees. What I found was more scrub and trees all of one variety. Although there were loads of paths leading away from the canal, hardly anything worth photographing. I did make it up to an open cast mine with some sort of gold obelisk in the centre (have no idea what that was all about) but the paths surrounding the obelisk were laid out for mountain bikers rather than walkers. I did find some very colourful toadstools though. A comment was left by Kevin TOO (Thankyou for the info) with a link to the tower. It is the Golden Tower of Leaves

Back at FS and we moved once more but this time only about a quarter of a mile further along. Lovely and rural and right by the woods. Just a faint noise from the motorway but inside the boat, we could hardly hear it.

Tried my hand at fishing for the first time in ages. Sat for nearly 45 minutes without as much as a nibble and was all for packing up when the float shot off across the canal. From then onwards the fish came thick and fast and although most were small fry I was more than happy with the two decent Perch and the one good size Bream.

During my fishing session, I heard the sound of helicopters. I'm assuming these are military choppers although no idea what that mushroom-like thing is near to the blades. I also had a lucky snap when this Buzzard appeared as I clicked the shutter.

And just these flies seen on the walk