A long weekend away

We have just returned to our mooring at Hopwas after a long weekend away. We left Hopwas on Friday and cruised up to Fradley where we met up with some new friends we had made at the National Festival. We then cruised together to Alrewas and moored up for the weekend. A nice meal was had at The Crown in Alrewas on Friday evening, followed by a fairly long walk to the National Memorial Arboretum on Saturday. We ended up walking right to the far end of the arboretum as we had just started our new pursuit of geocaching.

On Sunday we both moved back to Fradley where I met up with Bruce and Sheila from nb SANITY. They were on their way back to Alrewas for a few days.

On Monday morning Sandra and Paul on nb KANDAHAR left Fradley to return to their mooring at Stafford. We left later to return to Hopwas.

To most people KANDAHAR is the second city in Afghanistan. BUT....HMS KANDAHAR was one of several K class destoyers built in 1938 and commissioned into the Royal Navy in 1939. After a relatively short service in the Indian Ocean and then the Mediterranean KANDAHAR left Malta with several other warshops to intercept an Italian convoy off of the coast of Tripoli, one of the warships, HMS NEPTUNE struck a mine and started to sink. KANDAHAR went in to rescue the crew and also stuck a mine. NEPTUNE sank almost immediately and KANDAHAR sank much later. Other warships were called back from the rescue because of the uncertainty as to where were the mines.

HMS NEPTUNE sank with the loss of over 700 lives, only one person survived. This was probably, and still is, the greatest loss of life in one warship in the history of the Royal Navy.

Anyway, we left Fradley, found a geocache near Fisherewick on the way back, and are now moored up for the best part of the winter.