Sunny in Stoke

Usually we console ourselves, locking down through Stoke in the rain, that we're not missing very much, but it was actually quite pleasant today in the sunshine. We managed an early start, as I'd woken early and made the tea at half five. This meant that we were on our way just after seven.

It was my turn to lock and I had a fairly easy trip of it, the first three locks being full or nearly so. I had to turn the last couple in Stoke itself, but a boat turned up as the last one was filling so I didn't have to close up after we'd got down.

There followed the pleasant run out of town, past the Dolphin boatyard/fishing tackle/air gun/archery/C&W Line Dance store that I've written about before. There follows the Incinerator with the A50 crossing, the Britannia Stadium, the massive warehouse and the open country (for the moment) to Trentham. A boat was emerging from Trentham Lock as we arrived, so that I didn't even have to get off before we were in the lock.

Once down, I walked round the corner to the Wedgwood moorings. Elusive, who had been on the Etruria mooring when we arrived yesterday, was already there, but no-one else. We're on the very beginning, out in the open in the sun, though some strangely Spring-like rain has been coming and going this afternoon.

It didn't start until we were back from a quick geocaching trip. It's ages since we did any, so we picked a nice simple looking one for starters and found it without too much trouble. The second one was in a field behind the village. We were put off by Private Land signs on the gates and a lack of a stile into the field, so we chickened out.

No matter, it made a nice change to just be walking for the sake of it again, a measure of how much Sheila's feet have improved since her ops. We've been resting quietly in the boat since, sometimes out on the bow in the sun, sometimes hiding inside from the rain.

It'll be a lazy start tomorrow as we're only popping down the Meaford Locks to tie at the top of Stone and do a bit more shopping in one of our favourite towns.

Windy Wedgwood and unexpected pleasures

As planned, we ate in the Toby Carvery last night. Possibly because it was a slow night, it was a touch disappointing. Service was fine, the Pedigree was in good nick, but the veg were very tired. They'd clearly been sat under the hot lamps too long.

Anyhow, it was perfectly edible and, of course, reasonably priced.

This morning, having seen the forecast for wind and rain later, we got away just after seven and an hour later were in the bottom lock of the Stoke flight. I steered briskly along the long pound, past the Dolphin yard transplanted from Louisiana, past the Waste Incinerator and the Britannium Stadium, through Trentham to the last lock of the day.

The wind did indeed rise as we went, so we moored on the Wedgwood visitor moorings just in time before it became impossible. No rain had arrived yet, so, having drunk a cup of coffee apiece, we walked into Barlaston to buy meat at the butchers.

It fairly tipped it down in the middle of the day and was just easing off when a sodden Peter and Melanie turned up on Inkling.

We kidnapped their dogs:

In due course, Peter and Melanie came to find them, drank a cup of tea with us and stayed for a right natter. We're each eating on our own boats then joining them on Inkling for a glass of wine and some intellectual exercise. Well, Rummikub, any way...



 

Getting South of Stoke

We had a whole half hour’s extra kip last night, and didn’t come to until half six. My cold is on the mend (pauses to sneeze), but Sheila is still suffering something rotten. Still, we were on our way at half seven; it took 45 minutes rather than 30 to get to Etruria Top, but then we made up for it firstly by having most of the locks with us and a boat to cross with at the others and secondly because, thanks to all the water they’re running down off the Macc, the long pound out of Stoke was well up.

This makes it very deep by canal standards, and Sanity Again showed her paces. For some of the time, between the incinerator and Hem Heath, I had to be careful not to break the speed limit of 4 mph.

In consequence, we took almost exactly three and a half hours for the run, tying on the VMs at Wedgwood at eleven.

With the boat secure, I left Sheila recovering slowly in the saloon (it had been her turn to lock)  and got my own exercise walking on to Barlaston village. Here some bread, Staffordshire oatcakes, a lettuce and (from the butcher) chicken fillets, pork chops and a pork pie were obtained.

Oh, and a newspaper.

/wahaha

The oatcakes, pie and lettuce soon played their parts in our lunch, which was followed by a quietish time. Pottering on the net and reading has filled in the afternoon.

It’s not been all wasted, mind. Continuing frustration with Yahoo’s knavish tricks has finally led me to ponder the virtues of a forum or bulletin board for the Braidbar Owners’ Group.

My own web host provider, Dataflame, offers YaBB and phpBB already installed, so I’m gently exploring these as options. I know just a bit about HTML and the like, but I’m by no means a sophisticated user. If we go down this route, it will have to be with something that doesn’t need a lot of fancy work from me.

Tomorrow, we’ll go on to the top of Stone, probably, but the forecast for Sunday and Monday looks pretty dire, with a lot of rain on Sunday and even more wind on Monday. Looks like the equinox is arriving early this year.

We may have to sit tight for a while and then boat on hard to make up the lost time.

Autumnal weather...

… and not in a good way, frankly. It's been cool, damp and breezy, with a grim grey cloud cover that's as mood lowering as a bright sunny day is mood elevating.

No matter, it's not bad enough to stop us boating, so we've carried on down the Stoke Locks to the Wedgwood moorings outside Barlaston.

We'd had a good meal last night at the Toby Carvery; it was very busy, of course, and we had to wait twenty minutes for a table, but our server remained cheerful though run off her feet, and we ate well and cheaply.

Before we went in, we had a chance to chat briefly to Rita and Scooby on Festina Lente, which was tied right outside the pub. They were entertaining friends from the marina, so weren't coming in – hopefully, they'll be overtaking us sometime in the next few days and we'll have a proper chance for a natter and maybe a few brews.

We got here a bit before half eleven, and I popped along to the Londis in the filling station to get a paper. It's a bit of a walk, 12 minutes at my brisk pace, but after spending the morning on the back of the boat watching Sheila do all the work, I needed the exercise and was grateful for the chance to warm up a bit.

That's about it as far as boating goes; like many of my fellow bloggers, can I suggest that you consider donating to the Canal & River Trust's appeal for the funds to repair the breaches in the northern Trent and Mersey? They've got a contingency fund to cover untoward events like this, but that just means that they can get on with the repair without having to wait to raise the cash.

Whatever it costs will have to come out of the maintenance budget sooner or later, unless the appeal raises enough to do the job. It's one of the big advantages of being a charity that, like the National Trust, they can run specific appeals for this kind of thing.

You can text BREACH to 70800 to donate a fiver straight away, or, better, go to the webpage to read all about it and donate whatever you want, with the option to GiftAid it if you are a UK taxpayer.

Finally, on a lighter note, here's what Sally was thinking at a recent agility competition:

See you tomorrow…

/bye

Straight through Stoke

Boating through Stoke is a bit of a curate's egg; parts are classic heritage type canal, with the remains of the old potteries giving a very clear idea of the original purpose, and parts are recovering, post-industrial land, like the stretch through the site of Shelton Steelworks, but parts are just urban grot, nothing like as bad as the worst of the BCN (Garrison Locks, for example) but still pretty discouraging. On the other hand, the water is pretty deep and wide for most of it, and Sanity Again did a steady 3.8 mph for much of the morning.

For once in Stoke, the weather was pleasant; cool, admittedly, but dry and sunny for some of the time. I needed the coolth to keep me awake, it not having been the most undisturbed of nights. At around two, I was rudely awoken by a condensation drip from the Houdini above the bed going straight into my left armpit, and it took a little while to get off again.

Then at four, a burglar alarm went off somewhere in the housing estate over the canal, and  it was again a while before slumber returned. Indeed, as so often after being woken after you've had the essential first five hours, I never really slept deeply again. That said, Westport Lake continues to be a handy stop between Harecastle and the Wedgwood moorings; we'd still recommend them.

We got away just after half seven, and took just an hour to get to Etruria and the top of the Stoke Locks. Another hour's work (mostly by Sheila) saw us down them; some of the top gates leak quite badly, and number two in particular managed to cascade not just onto the stern deck, but over the closed back doors, soaking my legs and the floor of the engine 'ole.

A boat coming up warned us that Barlaston was having a mini music festival this afternoon, with live acts performing from a trailer in the Plume of Feathers car park, so we stopped at Wedgwood a bit after eleven, having taken almost exactly three and a half hours from Westport.

We walked into the village to shop, then returned to the boat to eat toasted bacon sandwiches for lunch.

We've had a quiet afternoon; Ice Breaker passed by while we were eating so Martin is now ahead of us. I just hope that he either went on beyond Barlaston, or else likes quite loud sixties and seventies music; we didn't get a chance to warn him.

Back again

Two weeks in April

It’s been a while since I posted here, I know, but life has been just a tad busy!

We had a great visit to Graeme and Cathy, and renewed our acquaintance with Daniel and Alexander. Hiring a car from Enterprise worked really well, and didn’t cost significantly more than two return tickets on the train. Not good for the planet, but it was very handy to have the use of the car whilst we were there.

Back at the yard on the Friday, we found that Sanity Again was very nearly finished. She is in almost every respect better that we had hoped, which is saying quite a lot. In a few days, I’ll do a post on the other side setting out the stuff that has worked really well, but high on the list must be the Hurricane heating, the white ceiling and the cooker (but that’s just the top of a very long list).

With the invaluable help of Roger Millin, we set off on the Saturday to boat to Alrewas. The itinerary and highlights went like this:

• Saturday 10 An easy day just as far as Gurnett Aqueduct, where we did a show round Sanity in the afternoon.
• Sunday 11 Serious boating commenced, with an eight o’clock start, down Bosley and on to the Little Morton Hall mooring for the night. Sanity Again is quite deep draughted, and progress was slow on the shallow Macc.
• Monday 12 We had intended to get to the top of Stone, and made good progress towards that, with a quick passage of Harecastle, but by mid afternoon we were pretty weary, and stopped on the Wedgwood moorings just before Barlaston.
• Tuesday 13 Getting into the routine now, with another great day's boating in fine weather. We’d planned to make Great Haywood, but decided that the country mooring a mile before Hoo Mill would be better.
• Wednesday 14 Sanity Again needed water, so we set off at seven, leaving Roger to follow on in Sanity at the usual time. By 7.45 we were on the water point at Great Haywood, and filled up by half eight, even though her big (780 litres) water tank was over half empty. Then, when Roger arrived, on we went, aiming for the top of Shade House. We stopped in Handsacre for lunch, then went on to discover that the Shade House moorings were full, so came on down the flight, and tied both boats without difficulty on the visitor moorings opposite the cafe.

This morning, Roger left us, Elanor taking him back to Higher Poynton to collect his car. After he’d gone, we took Sanity on down to Bagnall Lock, where again there was plenty of room. We’ve got a show round there tomorrow morning, and we’ll take Sanity Again down to join her first thing.

We’ve been pottering on board for the rest of the day, gradually getting things put away where we want them.

Because we’ve been boating so hard (for us) I’ve not been keeping my usual notes of who we met and so on, so I’ll just say thanks to all those blog readers and fellow Braidbar owners whom we’ve seen during the week and who made nice remarks about the new boat.

And of course, yet again thanks to Roger for great company and brilliant boating.

Very, very busy

We're having a fantastic time moving Sanity and Sanity Again south, with the first break planned for Alrewas on Thursday.

Between three of us working two boats, marginal connections and all the rest, I'm not going to be able to post until we stop for a few days. Meantime, all thanks to Roger Millin for his unflagging help.