Stoned again

Geoff on Seyella is quite right, we do like early starts if we've got some serious boating to do, and today showed why. With locking to do straight away, there was no point in Sheila getting going before she had a locking crew, but even so, we were approaching Etruria Top by eight. And by the time we were out of that first lock, there were another two boats waiting behind us. Any later, and we'd have been behind them all the way down; as it was, we had most of the locks with us.

A quick stop at Barlaston to buy papers, and off we went again, getting to the moorings above Lime Kiln Lock just on twelve. We'd made faster progress than usual thanks to Peter's help with the windlass, and were very pleased with ourselves. The moorings were quite full here, but we've still been able to get a reasonable one.

After lunch, some internet research showed that there wasn't a good train from Stone until this evening, but that a bus service ran to Stoke station. Unfortunately, the National Rail website sent us to the wrong stop, but some local advice saw us at the right one in good time. For future reference, the bus goes from the stop on Crown Street, not from Granville Square, at twenty past the hour.

After seeing Peter and Jan off, we went round to Morrisons to get some supplies, came back to the boat for a cup of tea, then visited Stone Boat Building to order some supplies of touch up paint; they can do pretty well any make and shade, and should have what we want in by Friday.

Our next fixed point is an appointment in Alrewas surgery a week tomorrow, so we're going to take a break from boating here for a couple of nights.