A couple of lazy days

26th & 27th October

Yesterday was a day to take easy – we had no plans to move on from Stone, as boating on to Barlaston today and then through Stoke the next day would mean navigating Stoke at the weekend. Instead, we’re going to take an extra day at each location, and go through Stoke on Monday.

We’re not in a rush, as we want to be at the foot of Bosley Locks on the 31st of the month, so as to be out in the countryside during Trick or Treat time. It takes us two days to boat from Stone to the South portal of Harecastle Tunnel, and another two to Bosley, so no rush, folks.

All this is a justification for the lazy start we made, ambling up to the chandlery at Stone Boat Building during the morning, where we bought a new shower head, and then round to an automotive shop, where the basic engine oil was £13 for 5 litres, as opposed to £17.50 at Stone BB.

We took the booty back to the boat, and then did another trip to Morrisons for routine grocery shopping.

After lunch, we had an easy afternoon, with me surfing the web and Sheila knitting my new Guernsey. In the course of this, I came across a curiosity – Andrew Denny’s Granny Buttons blog had an article about Iain and Luisa Bryceland and Braidbar, according to the RSS feed I use to keep an eye on my favourite blogs. When I tried to click through to the actual page, so as to give a link for it here, it was gone.

Confused, I emailed Andrew to ask what was going on. Later in the day, I had a reply from that excellent gent, explaining that he had been working on the article with a plan to publish it later in the week, but had accidentally clicked the “Publish now” button by mistake. He’d realised almost immediately, and taken it down again, but not before the RSS feed system had picked it up.

When it actually appears, I’ll mention it again here.

Today, we’ve done some more boating, but it’s not been a high pressure event. We got away about half nine, and worked up the Stone and Meaford (pr “Mefford”) flights. The only excitement was that the bow fender got caught under the top cill on one of the Meaford locks, which are in poor nick generally. It stretched and partly broke the strop that holds the fender up, and I’ve had to replace it now we’re moored.

In addition, the towpath in the middle of the Meaford flight has been collapsing into the cut for as long as we’ve been going past on Sanity. Lengths of brightly coloured temporary net fencing have been extending further and further each year. This time, they’ve actually had to close the towpath it’s so bad. There is a stoppage listed for the flight this winter, but only to repair the lock gates – no reference to the urgent need to pile the canalside.

We’re now moored near the Wedgwood factory at Barlaston, and will stay here tomorrow, as I said above. We got some cutting of firewood and sweeping of the roof done before the rain set in, and hopefully will be able to do a bit more boat cleaning tomorrow.