Forks in the road

Continuing up the Caldon canal, we came to another of those landmarks that draw your hand irresistibly towards the camera.

Apparently (according to Waterways World) the island used to be the pivot point of a swing bridge carrying a light railway over the canal. I expect anyone who's ever come this way has gone home with a photo or two. The one above was taken looking back, the one below was what we saw as we approached.

Just through the bridge is a basin which used to serve the lime-barge industry, but which now houses the Stoke-on-Trent Boat Club. To stay on the main line of the canal you have to turn sharp right.

The other place at which this waterway forks is at Denford, where the Froghall branch carries straight on down three locks, while the Leek branch turns right along a lock-free pound, shortly passing over the lower branch, by now far below.

You can't go anywhere fast on the Caldon. In the first place, it's far too shallow and, in the second place, even if it wasn't, the canal deserves a dawdle. So we've come slowly to Leek and visited Morrisons for some Staffordshire oatcakes – possibly the longest journey specifically for such oatcakes ever undertaken by humankind. Well, we did buy one or two other things while we were at it (in fact, quite a lot).

Tonight we stay here. Tomorrow we retrace our steps to the junction and go down the three locks of the Froghall branch. After that it all gets a bit complicated – down that branch a bit and back on Friday with family. Back to Leek on Saturday. More family doings on Sunday. I'm tempted to leave an Ariadne thread as we move about to make sure that we don't lose track of where we are and can finally escape the Caldon labyrinth. Except that I expect it would get wrapped around the prop.

Caldon duck

Today we came through a stretch of the Trent and Mersey in the southern reaches of Stoke-on-Trent which was completely devoid of wildfowl. It isn't just that they don't like urban environments – they appeared elsewhere in what seemed to be the most unlikely of places. Ducks, in particular, in an assortment of varieties, including the slightly larger black and white splotchy sort that seem to be some farmyard breed escaped and gone native. But, in this stretch, not a moorhen, duck, swan, goose or anything else was to be seen. It was quite nice, when we moored up at Milton on the Caldon Canal this afternoon, to be greeted by the usual little flotilla, including this chappie.

The Caldon Canal branches off the Trent and Mersey at Etruria Junction. The unusual name for this area was given by Josiah Wedgwood when he established one of his major pottery centres here – it comes from the Etruscans of ancient Italy who apparently were known for their artistic flair. Wedgwood was himself one of the major players in the building of the Trent and Mersey – it was to save (and build) him a fortune by providing a way of moving his wares without half of them breaking en route. Today the junction, with its museum and events, celebrates canals rather than pots, and has a statue of James Brindley, the engineer for the T&M and other canals.

The first part of the Caldon goes through a very mixed part of Stoke. This was where we came on our very first cruise on Erin Mae in 2011, and the initial mile was throughly depressing and a bit scary. We were pleasantly surprised two years ago to discover all sorts of urban renewal projects underway, including a new housing development along the canal.

This has now been expanded to the other side, and one new estate has a very striking tribute to the city's past, with a couple of kilns left in place.

With these suburbs straddling the canal bridges are constant – including one electric lift-bridge where you try not to hold up too many cars as you pass sedately in front of their noses. But the one we always remember is Nº 9, because that's where we lost our chimney on that first cruise.

It's the lowest bridge we've encountered anywhere on the network. The sharp-eyed will note that I detached the chimney this time and laid it flat. It's only 12 inches, but it would have gone!

You can imagine what the girder might do our heads if we weren't careful. Now that's what I call a Caldon duck!

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.

Stone

As we travel. we try to link up with local churches for Sunday morning worship. What would you google in Stone? "Stone Church" gives you a range of results that are not exactly relevant!

Stone also offers an opportunity to lay in supplies. With plans for turning right in Stoke and going up the Caldon Canal, this is the last chance for a decent supermarket shop before Leek. We'd planned on eating some Shropshire oatcakes with family on Friday, but unfortunately have found that they have a life expectancy of about three days (the oatcakes, that is, not the family!). Unless we can find an en-route supplier (suggestions, anyone?), we may have to push on to Leek for an oatcake shop before coming back to the Hollybush Inn where we're meeting on Friday. Not the end of the world.

The Star in Stone has been doing good trade on this fine day, which is getting hotter by the minute as hurricane Ophelia drags all that air up from the south. Tomorrow's forecast still looks good for our trip to Trentham – perhaps a bit gusty around the time we expect to arrive. My best beloved's Donegal family, however, looks likely to cop rather more of the wind, and we'll be thinking of them and others we know over there.

North by North-West

Our brief trip home was highly successful in its primary purpose – getting my best beloved's dental emergency unemergencified. Yesterday we drove back north to Erin Mae, wondering from time to time what on earth had induced us to do so on a Friday afternoon, when the world and her husband are going places. But we have plans! Our big question is whether the weather will allow us to fulfil them. Everybody's talking about a hurricane for Monday – and boaters, generally speaking, don't like the wind. But if you look at the Met Office website, the forecast for our neck of the woods seems at most a little breezy and for the most part quite balmy.

So (intrepid adventurers that we are) out we set, following the Trent and Mersey on its North-West passage to Stone. And very nice it was, too, with the autumn colours around on a sunny afternoon.

It was a bit of a long haul (over 4½ hours) and we'd started late, so we were slightly concerned about finding a mooring spot. A boater who helped us up the first lock in Stone indicated that there was a place above the second lock, just behind his boat, where we could squeeze in and no one would mind us staying over the weekend. The first part of his assurance was correct. We'll report back some other time on the the second part was as accurate!

A tale of two hirers

The first hirer we met today was a Black Prince boat coming through a bridge hole. There were two people sitting at the front enjoying the scenery, and two guys at the back doing the steering. Now this section of the Staffs and Worcs, though much better than it used to be, is still pretty shallow in places, and they clearly were finding this a challenge. They were being very careful and going very slowly, but as a result found it difficult to get their boat pointed in the right direction. There was much yanking on the tiller to try and pull the stern round. Another boater followed them under the bridge, and looked as though he was having to go slower than tickover most of the time. Since the name of his boat was "As It Comes" we exchanged a few pleasantries as we passed on needing to take that seriously!

A little later we found ourselves behind an older couple in an Anglo-Welsh boat, also going slowly. When we were 50 yards behind, they turned to wave us past and, to facilitate this, decided to stop and hold their boat on the line. Bringing a boat neatly to the bank on the curves of this section is challenging even for experienced boaters, and they found themselves with one on the towpath trying to control the boat with the line, and boat with a mind of its own pushing out into mid-stream. We took our time and chose the moment to glide by, and he called out a question, which I stopped to answer. He basically wanted to know what was the rule about waving another boat by – which side should it be? I replied to the effect that it was such a rare occurrence there probably wasn't a rule – you do whatever seems right in the conditions, and what he'd done seemed quite appropriate. I don't think I've ever seen this discussed.

At the time we were more concerned about them getting started again with both on board, ready for the corner just ahead where you go aground if you cut it too fine. As it happens, they came by a little later as we were tied up in Tixall Wide for a spot of lunch. It's always nice to stop there when on our way back to the marina – delays the inevitable just a little bit.

Recapitulation, Part the Third

There were going to be only two parts, but today we came past the garden at Acton Trussell that I reported two weeks ago but had failed to capture in photo.

I realised we were approaching it, so had the camera out super-early.

The blooms were not quite what they were a fortnight ago, but still worth recording.

Now I capitulate – I promise that's the end of recapitulating. Until the next time.