Sunny Stoke

It normally rains when we traverse Stoke, but today it has been pleasantly sunny, though cool to start with. As we want to go on to the Little Morton Hall moorings tomorrow, a bit further than we normally would after passing through Harecastle, we've come on to Westport Lake rather than stopping at Etruria. In view of the longish run, we made a start at seven, Sheila steering and your present interlocutor locking, washing up, starting the washing machine and printing out the Saturday Independent Giant General Knowledge Crossword.

Never let it be said that our lifestyle is entirely indolent. My good luck in the matter of the locks continued, with all six being either with us or containing boats locking down when we got there. Indeed, the cut was quite busy by the time we got to the centre of Stoke and started up the locks. All went very smoothly until we got to the top, where I had to explain to the young man off the boat waiting to come down that the reason the lock wasn't completely filling was that one of the bottom paddles was still a few inches up.

It's a good job that there's plenty of water in the summit pound after Friday's rain, he'd been there for some time, pushing the top gate balance beam to no avail.

We would have been able to tie in front of the Toby Carvery at Etruria had we wished and there was a great deal of room at Westport when we got here, though it's filled up a bit now, naturally. We've had a walk round the lake, a chat with the chuggers (one for Staffs Wildlife Trust and one for Friends of CRT) and generally had a relaxing afternoon, though the crossword wasn't very fulfilling. Too many rock bands, obscure sportsmen and the like.

Though I did get the very first clue straight off: "Whimsical four line biographical poem invented by E C Bentley (8)". An example would be

Sir Christopher Wren

Said "I am going to dine with some men

If anyone calls

Say I'm designing St Paul's."

Answer here.