Saturday 1st April.
We’ve had quite an energetic day today, well I have! Travelling 7.5 miles and 9 locks to Hanley, which is on the outskirts of Stoke on Trent, on the Caldon Canal. I’m a bit peeved actually because my second string camera has now gone the same way as my new one! There hasn’t been much to photograph along this stretch but I would have liked to get some shots of the Etruscan Bone and Flint factory with it’s old working boat outside and the remaining preserved bottle kilns make quite interesting viewing. I had taken a few pics this morning before everything went tits up but I can’t even recover them now!
We are moored in a rather unpicturesque setting with a building site on one side and a cleared factory site on the other. However as most of the new houses are either unfinished or unoccupied it is pretty quiet here! There are fabulous new moorings here, put in as part of the regeneration but the scenery is, as yet, a bit grim. It will be nice when it’s finished though. As we have never been up here before we decided to moor here while we could as we didn’t know where there were any more decent moorings. It was already mid afternoon when we got to here and threatening to rain. We had left Barlaston quite early this morning and some of the locks had been fairly hard. Do you know, we haven’t even been to the pub today! We will probably find a lovely spot (and a pub) just round the corner when we go tomorrow!
