Turned out wet again

It’s been yet another good day, albeit a wet one this afternoon. Making another 7.30 start, Sheila moved Sanity Again onto the water point and we filled up the tank, taking the chance to get rid of the rubbish and recycling at the same time. (There’s a recycling bank round the far side of the big blue building from the water point; it takes everything but plastic, which can be dumped in the smaller litter bin type recycling near the road.)

Once topped up, I lock wheeled and Sheila steered up the Stone and Meaford Locks. All were against us at first, but we crossed with April Fool at Meaford Bottom and had a couple in our favour.

Once above them all, it was a steady plod to Barlaston; there’s a big towpath resurfacing project between Barlaston and Meaford at the moment, funded by the County Council, hooray.

/nobigdeal

The final approach to Barlaston was enlivened by the sight of a load of youngsters being inducted into the mysteries of canoeing. We’ve tied just on the further side of the village, and guess what, flotillas of wobbly canoes seem to have been passing us all day.

There was much bumping and banging at first until we managed to suggest to the shepherding adults that fending off with hands rather than paddles or the bows of the canoe would a) make less noise inside for us and b) reduce the damage to aforesaid paddles and bows, steel being a much more robust material than cheap GRP.

It’s great to see kids enjoying the canal, mind.

After coffee we made a brief expedition to the village to get meat, there being a good butcher here. The afternoon’s been spent indoors, catching up with stuff like the Pub Guide.

Tomorrow, we’ll work our way up through Stoke to Etruria, spend the night there and then carry on up the Caldon, the first new water Sanity Again has done for a bit. We were last up there in Sanity in 2006.

It’s raining quite hard now, which will be a relief for the hay fever sufferers amongst us, still with the promise of better weather on Friday and over the weekend.