Caldon Cruise: Day 1

A bright sunny morning, and we were ready to leave our moorings outside the pub at Festival Park at 8.30.  Now we’re not on a schedule, we are planning much shorter days than when we always needed to get back somewhere — but the habit of setting off fairly early might be hard to break!  Just a little further south, we turned onto the Caldon Canal at Etruria Junction.

The last time we cruised the Caldon was in September 2017; the time before that was on our share boat, Debdale, in 2009.  We joked that we do the Caldon every eight years whether we need to or not!  The difference will be that on both previous occasions we spent only around 72 hours on it, whereas now we’ll have much more time to explore.

The first major obstacle are the Bedford Street Locks, a staircase pair.  But they were already set with the bottom lock empty and the top lock full, so we could go straight up.

The sun was in our eyes as we went through Hanley Park, with its elaborate bridges.

The housing which was new the last time we were here now looks a bit more established, but still a bit incongruous with the preserved bottle kilns.

Just before the lift bridge, there’s a massive factory or warehouse with its roof covered in solar panels.  A bit of land between it and the canal is now also having a solar farm installed.

At the bridge, Adrian took the key of power and pressed the buttons.  No cars were stopped, although one did have to slow down a bit to allow the barriers to go back up.

Many of the bridges on this canal are on very sharp bends.  The piling before Bridge 13 has clearly been hit many times in quite a significant way, and at 14 I could see through the trees on the corner than a boat was coming the other way, seemingly at some speed.  I sounded my horn to let him know I was there, and he diverted, bumping the bridge with his bow fender.  It meant there was room for me to go through.  There are more sharp bends before Milton too.  One of the houses there was flying a Happy Easter flag.

When we got to Engine Lock, only the second boat we’d seen all day was waiting to go up; there was also one coming down.  Adrian went to help, and then emptied the lock for us.  It’s a deep one, at just over 12ft.

We stopped just off the lock landing above the lock, at before lunchtime.  Last time we came this way and stopped here, we’d started off that morning in Stone!  After lunch, we walked back to Milton, which turns out to have a good range of shops, including a very large and eclectic second hand book shop.

6 miles, 4 locks.