We've settled into serious boating mode until we get to Braidbar: this involves early rising and boating until about mid morning. Yesterday we were on the way by seven and as a result had a steady run to Stone. At each of the locks we might have to wait for the boat ahead to clear the lock and for one coming the other way to come down, but no worse queuing than that.
On arrival, we found that the Boaters Christian Fellowship had taken over all the visitor moorings below Star Lock. Apparently, they are on a Mission to the people of Stone until next Wednesday. Fortunately we had already planned to go up the lock flight and tie on the moorings opposite Roger Fuller's boatyard. At half nine, we found just one space on those moorings, although they are more often deserted in our experience.
In the past, I've been reluctant to tie up there, assuming that it would be a much longer walk to the town centre. Checking it with the Garmin, however, showed that it was just half a mile and ten minutes walk to the top of the high street and another five minutes to the Morrison's supermarket.
Stone was very busy with a book-fair; it's a most enterprising town in that way, and one in which we wouldn't mind spending our declining years. The only concerns I would have would be the recent poor reputation of Stafford General Hospital, and the fact that Staffordshire County Council doesn't seem to do well in terms of its delivery of social care.
We did a general shop before lunch and then afterwards walked down to check out the chandlery at Stone Boat Building. There we found a couple of basic fender hangers for hooking onto the cabin rails and a hammock type net that we're going to experiment with as a device for stopping small children falling out of their bunks.
It was a very fast internet connection, which was handy for catching up on various bits and bobs. I found a report of a classic exchange between BW and one of the participants of the recent Waterways World web chat on the Granny Buttons blog:
[Comment From David Roberts]
On the issue of using volunteeers to help look after the sites, I suggested some time ago that if BW provided a mower, we would keep the cut grass, instead of the contractor doing it with a styrimmer at the run every six weeks or so (and costing BW a fortune). Of course the answer was no - had to be on approved supplier list, H&S etyc. Just to cut the grass!
Vince Moran [BW Operations Director]:
David - although we are keen to increase volunteer involvement we cannot ignore safety risks and mowers and strimmers do fall into the higher risk end of things and we can't just give someone a mower and say get on with it.
I really despair of BW sometimes. WRG runs up against the same problem when discussing volunteer input to the maintenance of the existing system. Despite the fact that next year will see the fortieth birthday of the Waterway Recovery Group and that during that time we have developed very substantial experience in training volunteers to undertake serious engineering safely, BW cannot be persuaded that we are fit to do much more than litter pick and haul rubbish out of the waterway.
Anything like reconstruction of a lock wall, the sort of thing that wrg camps do several times every summer, has to be expensively contracted out to commercial engineers.
Today we didn't get going until seven thirty, since the Meaford locks were only just round the corner and were the only ones scheduled for today's run. By half nine we had arrived at Barlaston where we found a lot of boats not yet on the move, but nonetheless had no difficulty in finding a space.
On the way up the flight we were hailed by Pip who was lockwheeling Windsong whilst Roger steered. I see from their blog that we are just one of various canal bloggers they've spotted in the last few days.
Having tied, I walked back to the village to get a paper at the handy Londis, together with a loaf of bread to keep us going for the next couple of days. There was still a lot of the morning left, so we put it to good use by going off in the opposite direction and finding a cache in Hem Heath Wood.
This was another good example of the way in which geocaching encourages you to find walks that would otherwise be overlooked. The weather has been glorious, classic Indian Summer stuff, and we've spent the afternoon on the boat or sitting in the bow.
Sheila continues to experiment with a variety of new crochet patterns culled from the web, and I have at last finished compiling the quiz for next weekend.
Tomorrow sees the big push to get up through Stoke and through Harecastle Tunnel.
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