A walk around Stone before moving on.

Saturday morning Rod and I walked into the town of Stone, I knew I had stopped here before, I distinctly remembered having a lunchtime pint in the Star pub, but I had no other recollections of it until we stopped at an auto parts shop, it all came back to me then, to read about my last visit     Click here.
There was a large market and some sort of drink festival going on, the drink festival was I believe set up in the park area just before Stone itself but the market occupied the whole of the High Street, and it was busy and obviously being enjoyed, we wandered around before returning to the Chandlers where I bought a new lightweight extending boathook, more money spent!

The weather was looking very dubious early this morning but it had stopped raining by 8:45 so we cast off around 9am, I lead the way out of Stone and past the very nice well maintained housing estate leading up to the first lock of the Meaford flight of four locks (31-34) which lift you a total of 32’ 5”.

The first lock was against us so I went ahead and turned it for Rod to go up, I also walked ahead and set the next lock (32) which was quite close by, so that Rod could go straight from one to the other gently nudging the gates open with his boat, he then went ahead to 33 pausing to open the bottom paddles for me on lock 32 so that I could also go straight in nudging the gates open.

At lock 33 there was a slight confusion as a moored boat had set it before moving off, Rod thought he had set it for him so continued in but once he realised his error he apologised and returned to lock them through, all was well in the end, the lock was extremely slow to fill due to a problem with sluices and paddles so it took a while for us both to get through.

Lock 33 ahead.

After eventually going through that one and the last, lock 34, Rod went on ahead while I continued up and then we had almost three miles of lock free cruising.

Nice little private mooring for two boats

We are in Stoke now, land of the potteries and the first sign of that was the Wedgewood building.

We passed through Barlaston where I had stopped before, if you want to read about that visit    Click Here

Rod was just finishing Trentham lock as I arrived on the landing so I helped him finish that and after a quick discussion left the decision on mooring or continuing up the five Stoke locks to him.

Trentham lock

Passing through Hem Heath.

Just around the corner Rod had chosen a spot to moor, I think he was considering my need to watch the Formula One race rather than feeling enough was enough, but I was more than happy with the decision, so here we are for tonight at least.

Current Mooring:

Totals today: 4 miles : 5 locks