Yet another bright sunny morning. We were away about 9am, and made our way through Milton and towards Stoke-on-Trent. Many of the bridges are on bends, making them tricky to approach and impossible to see if anything is coming. This is heading for Bridge 14.
I went and pressed the buttons at Ivy House Lift Bridge, holding up three cars and a pick-up truck in the process. We waved at a group of school children out for a walk in Hanley Park. When we got to Planet Lock, Adrian set the lock and then went to the shop across the road to see if he could buy a bottle of milk. However, the only option they had was four pints of full fat — so he left it. Meanwhile, a cyclist had offered to close the gate while I went and did the paddles, but then found there was such a big collection of branches in the water he couldn’t actually get the gate closed. I fished them out with the boat hook, by which time Adrian was bc, empty handed. The final locks on the canal were the Bedford Street staircase pair.
At the junction, we rejoined the Trent and Mersey, and headed north. At the Steelite factory, they normally seem to be chucking away loads of rejects when we pass. Today, all was quiet, even the car park — so maybe they don’t work on a Friday. Anyway, the skip was already full.
We moored up at Westport Lake, on our own. After lunch, we walked to the next bridge, crossed it, and went up the hill to the main road, where there’s an Aldi, which had semi-skimmed in reasonable sizes. There’s also a Screwfix up there and a variety of other shops. It’s only a short walk, so well worth knowing about. Later we walked round the lake again, and found ourselves in front of the ice cream van, so it would have been rude not to.
8 miles, 3 locks. (41 miles, 34 locks)
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