Wednesday 28th April
Yesterday (Tuesday) we spent another pleasant day in Stone, mostly shopping, oh and going to the pub of course. We discovered a Morrison’s and as we are now going to make a detour up the Caldon Canal before we go through Stoke we needed to stock up. This entailed 2 trips, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Two rucksacks are no substitute for a car! On the way back from the first trip we met Barry and Barbara, who had arrived that morning and were moored about 3 boats in front of us.
Between shopping trips we took George to The Star. We had intended to try The Swan Inn, for a change, which is on the other side of the road to The Star but as George had other ideas and tried to drag me across the road full of traffic to The Star we decided we’d better go back there before there was an accident! As it happened it was a good thing because Barry and Barbara turned up for a drink and we had a nice chat.
This morning we emptied the elsan, filled up with water, diesel and got some coal (yes my fire is still in!) then travelled the 4 miles and 8 locks to Barlaston. A fairly uneventful trip with everyone going the opposite way to us (do they know something we don’t?) which made the locks easy. We could moor up right outside the pub at Barlaston, The Plume of Feathers. It is a pretty uninspiring pub though, even George got back in the boat after about 10 minutes! The canalside tables are chained to the ground – speaks volumes!
We have moored just outside the village not far from the Wedgwood factory, which we may visit tomorrow. This is a lovely spot but very busy with boaters, walkers, cyclists, joggers etc. Just now a cyclist went past, closely followed by ‘Cyril’ the Jack Russell, barking all the way, who in turn was hotly persued by his owners shouting at him to come back, to no avail, hilarious!
