Stone Thursday 26 November 2015

Last night we were treated to a large firework display which looked to be somewhere on the Trentham estate. We stayed in the boat to watch as the weather was quite miserable with heavy drizzle all night. It must have been just about continuous as we had 2.5 mm fall overnight. I don’t know what next door made of the fireworks but we didn’t hear any complaints from them. In case you are wondering what the small notice says its here.

This morning we visited the Wedgwood Pottery works, this is a new works, the old one being pulled down and developed as an upmarket housing estate. There are also plans to build a new marina. Due to the factory moving a bit north and the new building its quite a hike from the canal, not helped by the old footpaths being dug up. We went on the guided factory tour as well as visiting the pottery museum. You get to see quite a lot of the production going on and you are at liberty to walk round by yourself. When we left thankfully the drizzle had finally stopped and the weather felt quite warm.

we left the mooring at 1330 heading down to Stone for the night, of course we didn’t see any boats moving again, that’s 2 days without seeing a single one.
To the west of the canal just above Meaford Locks they are building a new business park and to facilitate this they are putting a new roundabout on the A34 so the road that crosses the canal by the top lock is closed to traffic, at least that means the coping stones will last a bit longer. Also in the estate they are planning to have a gas fired power station .

I was rather taken by this notice just above Newcastle Road Lock, I am not sure what is meant by it.  A short way above the lock there is a bridge crossing the canal and it still has the old rollers on the corners along side the towpath which were to stop the towing ropes rubbing on the corners of the bridge when horses pulled the boat, its such a shame these are being left to rot away as they are part of our heritage and just as important as the turn over bridges etc. soon all the little pieces like this will be gone.

Dropping through Yard lock we were pleased to see one of the boats that had been moored beside the car park had left, so that is where we have tucked in for the night, we were expecting to have to drop through Star lock to find a mooring.

Today’s Journey 4 miles 7 locks in 2¾ hours.