At the Swan, the dogs get a menu of their own — sausages, served on individual plates. Regulars call the pub the Mucky Duck, and on Wednesday nights the car park fills with motorbikes instead of cars — as much a fixture as the beer garden overlooking the canal.
The Swan sits right on the water at Fradley Junction, where the Coventry Canal meets the Trent & Mersey — built in the 1770s alongside its own warehouse while the canal was being dug, Grade II listed with the cottage next door. Inside: a public bar with an open fire, a small lounge, a vaulted-brick cellar room. Order scampi, liver and onions, faggots and peas, or ham and eggs; Thursday is steak night, and there's an ice cream parlour in summer. Three regular Everards ales — Old Original, Sunchaser, Tiger — plus three changing guest beers. TripAdvisor gives it 4 out of 5 from 348 reviews; people reach for "amazing" to describe the setting, which for once is accurate.
Fradley Junction has two shops and two cafés — a lot for a place this size. The Junction Gallery, by the swing bridge, sells chandlery, leather hats, waterway guidebooks and second-hand books. The Canalside Café, known locally as the Laughing Duck, does breakfasts and snacks seven days a week for the boaters, cyclists and walkers passing through.
Walk the towpath to Alrewas and you're there in a little over an hour, past old stone bridges — the Canal & River Trust's Wellbeing Walk. Stretch it into a 4.5-mile circular taking in Fradley Pool, once a canal reservoir, now a nature reserve with a bird hide, pond-dipping platforms and a tree sculpture trail.
There's no station in Fradley itself — the nearest is Lichfield Trent Valley — but the A38 dual carriageway runs past, on the line of the old Roman road, giving access to Burton, Derby and the M6 Toll; Diamond Bus routes 12 and 12E run to Lichfield and Burton-on-Trent.
St Stephen's dates from 1861, built as a chapel of ease so families didn't have to walk to Alrewas for church. The gable cracked in the war from bombers taking off next door at RAF Lichfield, and the churchyard holds war graves of 24 Royal Australian Air Force airmen, eight RAF personnel and one German Luftwaffe pilot.
RAF Lichfield flew Hurricanes, Wellingtons, Spitfires and Halifaxes from 1940 to 1958. Two of the village's older pubs are gone now — the Bell Inn and the Bulls Head — and the Fradley Arms, with its Wacky Warehouse for the kids, closed in November 2022 and stands empty. The old airfield is Fradley Park now, a distribution estate with Tesco among the tenants.
AFC Fradley has more than 300 children registered from age four, plus men's and women's sides, coached by professional footballer Katie Wilkinson. There are play parks on Worthington Road and Barlow Drive, and the village hall runs toddler groups and yoga sessions. Lichfield's cathedral is under four miles away; the National Memorial Arboretum at Alrewas is closer still.
On a summer evening the beer patio at the Swan fills up, boats keep arriving through the lock, and somewhere under a table a dog works through a plate of sausages that gets more care in the plating than most pub kids' menus.
