Birches Head

I think Diana must have put her clock forward 2 hours as we were away before 9am this morning. The weather app said the sine was shining but outside was very fine rain that slowly works its way everywhere, maybe it was an April Fools Day to catch me out. As the morning progressed the rain got worse and to top it all as I pulled away I picked up a Tesco bag for life, the reinforced ones, same material as builders bags.
Work is still ongoing at Sideway Bridge with rope and fencing in the canal on the offside. This is one of the routes to the football ground.

Looking back at the incinerator you can see how miserable the weather was and this was before it started raining properly.

I think the owner of this boat need to be thinking about getting the c=garden shares out to give it bit of a hair cut, its a bit straggly in places.

We arrived at the bottom of Stoke Locks and there was no queue, the lock was only part full so didn’t take to long to empty. A CRT employee was working hard trying to remove the extra letters that had been added to this “Caution” sign. I couldn’t read the extra letters but what ever they had used to write them wasn’t giving in without a struggle, but at least he was under the bridge out of the rain doing it.

Approaching Cockshute’s lock I could see a boat arriving above so held well back from the railway bridge to give them plenty of room to leave. Stoke Collage have designed a mural for the wall beside the lock hoping people get the message not to dump plastic in the cut..

We met another boat just as we were leaving the lock and then a hire boat just below Johnsons Lock, they looked well experienced and left the gates for us, as we locked up a boat was just leaving the top lock coming down, he said he had come through the tunnel this morning and there were 7 boats waiting to come south.
At Etruria Junction we turned back on our selves to first fill with water and then carry on up the Caldon canal. We had to wait for a boat already on the waterpoint before we could fill up, once that was done, as it was still raining we decided to call it a day and stop on the 48 hr moorings. I took a short walk to look at the old mill and I see it still has a large hole in the roof.

After lunch the rain stopped so we decided to carry on and go a bit further. For some reason Bedford Staircase lock was set ready for us, bottom chamber empty and top one full. Not sure how that could happen other than leaky gates/paddles.

As we passed Hanley Park we were pestered by some youngsters to give them a ride, something I have mixed feelings about but we refused, one of them climbed over the railings of bridge 5A as if to jump down onto the roof but thankfully thought better of it.
There are some interesting old in Hanley, I don’t

know what this long terraced building was, but the name is quite visible on the second one we passed. Johnson Brothers, sanitary manufacturers.

By now the weather was quite pleasant but we saw some inviting piling to moor against between bridges 14 and 14A so decided to call it a day.

Today’s Journey 8 locks, 6¾ miles 4 hours