Bartimaeus

Being very close to a town we decided to check out the shopping possibilities, cafes and hoped to see a traditional old town square. Market Bosworth did indeed have all of the above and we fitted in a morning coffee stop as well, accompanied by several dogs and Polish cyclists. On the way  we passed an unexpectedly decorated garden with a bit of a Julia Donaldson theme.

If anyone know where the axe and crown are from let me know! There does seem to be a scarecrow display brewing but I wasn’t sure these weren’t permanent decorations. In town there was a very attractive greengrocer and I got some choice local produce there as well as yeast so Shane will not have that excuse for not making bread. Shane spotted an amusing “sales” notice on the window!

We certainly came across a few wasps later in the day and there were some at the cafe, but perhaps people had taken up the sales offer as the shop didn’t seem to have any left.There were quite a few more traditional thatched houses looping out the other way and we also managed to actually see the steam train going through woods as we went back to the boat with our shopping. It was late morning but we thought we should cover a few miles before lunch.

We had not gone far before we passed a boat of holiday makers, a woman hailed us raising her empty glass, saying “you haven’t got a drink!”

We pulled in at a jetty for lunch. We were then very close to the site of the Battle of Bosworth. We had seen a very good exhibition in a church at Grafton Regis about Richard the Third (and others!). I wondered if the visitor centre would be any more informative. We went along to have a look. We happened to have arrived when there was a re enactment event and the visitor was closed so that remains unanswered.

I had time to feed some crumbs to ducks and then we cracked on with covering the distance. Still lots of slithering on the edges, but generally slow and steady was fine. Twice there was a swallow feeding or drinking frenzy just ahead of us. I got some very distant shots, and was excited to see so many diving and swooping at once. The second time there were even more and Shane went to the front and got a better picture.

The swallows weren’t the only ones we saw drinking from the canal. Apart from the boys on bikes, who used the canal side taps and drank straight from them, and the battery bank that was thirsty for deionised water, which I pumped in, there were also cattle.

We left the lid off the batteries for a while as there was an alert they were too hot. This is a first. I don’t know if it is related to the equalisation charge or not. It seems unlikely to be the heat of the day, perhaps it was just dehydration.