Perfect Harmony

Perfect Harmony
Moored at Huntingdon

Wednesday 15 June 2011

15th June '11

Well we turned around and after climbing 133'8" yesterday we have dropped 94'4" today. By that you can see that we haven't travelled quite back to where we started from but have decided to moor where it is a bit quieter and tackle the remaining 4 locks at Stone tomorrow.


This is where we moored last night - the road over the bridge is quite a busy one as this is the side of Stoke that has many of the industrial estates and the 'entertainment' complex that we moored next to! There was a Toby Inn about 100yds forward of us next to the Festival Park Marina.


Here's the marina entrance with the Toby on the right and we are turning at this point so it is the most northerly point of our travels.


This milepost was the last one we saw although we were only a short distance from the next one so we can see how far we have come from the marina. The Trent and Mersey is the only canal we have been on that has these mileposts along the whole stretch - they make a welcome record of our travels!


Stoke is a bewildering mixture of old and new - here is the sign pointing out the Roundhouse which is all that remains of the original Wedgewood factory - it was almost opposite us on the mooring just next to the bridge - behind it is part of the local newspaper buildings that take up the best part of the block - The Sentinal.

...and this is the Roundhouse - as much as you can see of it anyway! There were two at the entrance to the Wedgewood factory apparently.



More old and new - these are two remaining bottle ovens used in the pottery business - surrounded by some pretty awful modern architecture (I sound like Prince Charles!).

As I stood on the stern of the boat waiting to go through one of the locks in Stoke I took 4 pictures - one from each direction just to show the diversity of the area.



To the west.


To the south - the lock takes the canal down under this road - it's a long tunnel to get out of after getting through the lock!


To the east - modern industry over the railway the other side of the canal.


To the north where we had just come from - looking quite peaceful apart from all that's going on to the west!

After a blissful day of sunshine yesterday, today has reverted to normal and it has been overcast most of the day with brilliant spells (very short) of sunshine and other (rather longer) spells of rain - quite light rain but enough to make us damp and need anoraks that we have then been too hot in when the rain stopped!

We had lots of boats going down the locks ahead of us:

... and very few boats coming up so the took ages to get through as John had to fill each one  before I could take the boat in and then it had to be emptied to let me down and some of them were very deep - the deepest one was 11'11".

You can also get quite wet going down as they tend to leak and obviously this is where one stands! You tend to stay as well forward as you can without banging the front doors or you damage the paddle mechanism!

It took us nearly 2 1/2 hours to get down the 5 Stoke locks today, considerably longer than it took to get up on our own yesterday.



This shows that it isn't only boats that cause damage to bridges! I'd spotted this yesterday but couldn't get the camera out in time. Something must have really bashed this hard from the road, and it's not a very large road either!




This must be the poshest winding hole ever - we are moored just a bit upstream from it on the outskirts of Stone.

We were stopped at one lock by a photographer working for RSPCA. He was taking photos of people on boats with their pets, charging £1 for doing so and then he is going to e-mail the photos and if we like them we can pay for a proper print. I daresay they are going to be locked so that we can't download it ourselves but we thought it would be a nice idea so had it done. Why does this have to happen BEFORE I have had my shower and washed my hair - I can imagine looking a complete wreck especially as it was just after one of the rainshowers we had today! Still we shall wait and see.

Just in case anyone is interested I have started tweeting and put odd bits and pieces on as we cruise along, I'm on @livingonaboat if you want to follow me!

Not yet heard tomorrows weather forecast but hopefully it will be a bit better than today.....

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