To Atherstone

The day started sunny, but soon developed some showers and strong winds.  The mixture of strong sunlight and dark skies made for some spectacular views.

After lunch near Polesworth we headed for Atherstone hoping to get onto the flight before the 4 pm closure.  We made it with time to spare but found a large queue of frustrated folk coming the other way.  Several historic boats returning from a rally together with the ordinary traffic, and a broken ground paddle on the bottom lock, had together caused people to take seven hours or so to traverse the flight rather than the usual four.