Exposed

As we left before 9 this morning, Ophelia was beginning to make her presence felt.

However, travelling north from Stone up the Meaford flight was generally sheltered and pretty calm. All very enjoyable, apart from the 3rd of the four locks, which appears to be damaged and took about half an hour to fill.

We had thought about mooring up just south of Trentham lock, but we found a good space a little before, by the bridge that leads over to the Wedgwood works and exhibition rooms (well worth a visit). Since there's been more traffic than expected, and there is limited space by the lock, we stopped here, looking out west towards the eye of the storm.

What you can't see from the photo is how the wind had developed. Under these conditions, it seems there a balance to be struck between exposure to the elements and making sure that you're not susceptible to a tree collapsing on you. So we opted for the more open choice – it looks good in the sun, and feeds us electrons via the solar panel.

Meanwhile, Ophelia has been having some fun dragging dust up from the Sahara, with some extraordinary effects.

I did nothing manually with the exposure for this photo – just let my little Panasonic do it all by itself.  We're used to the moon occasionally appearing unusual – a harvest moon or that eclipse – but I can't remember seeing the sun looking quite like this before. When the clouds swirling in front, the effect was different again.

All very wonderful, but we're hoping Ophelia doesn't have too many surprises left in store.