We continued our leisurely drift away from Burton-on-Trent today.  Our cunning plan when shopping yesterday was not to buy bread, but instead to go back to the shop this morning.  After doing that and other minor chores, we didn’t set off until after lunch.

Clare did all the driving today, while I hopped off and did the (four) locks.  We’re coming back through a section of canal we’ve done very recently, so everything looks familiar, but different in the other direction.  We both remembered the unusually narrow bridge – the same width as a lock.

One of the locks had a detail that was either new, or I missed it last time. While I was waiting for Clare to drive out, I spotted a painted stone sitting at the foot of the ground paddle. I don’t know if mentioning it here will neutralise the threat.

The final section for the day was the river section. This time we’d be going upstream on the River Trent for a short distance.

We came up through the lock back on to canal again and filled up our water.  We moved on through the bridge to a similar mooring spot to our previous visit to Alrewas.  Today the temperature was in double figures and sunset was nearly 5pm, so the afternoon cruise felt very relaxed.  We were welcomed to our mooring by a cygnet who enjoyed some of our kitchen scraps.