Stoke to Stone. Was Stome stolen?

Friday morning and the cusp of half term. We were up fairly promptly with a lot of heavy locks to get through. Stoke Council tries hard to make the canal a green and pleasant space, but there's also a lot of graffiti and a bad reputation still hangs over it.

Here's the approach to the first lock of the day, at the Industrial museum and the turning off (on left) to Caldon Canal. Looking forward to revisiting this pretty and interesting canal, but it's currently closed for a complete reline of the canal bed.

After that it was lock after lock after lock and no photos got taken until we left Stoke behind and arrived at the small village of Barlaston. What a lovely mooring spot!

Unfortunately,  today was also the day that Andrew received the True Boaters Baptism. There was a strong side wind as we were mooring, threatening to push us away from the bank so he hurried and the front line - thrown on that morning from 3 feet away as Alison assisted with the turn out of the marina, in the wind - got tangled around the gas locker. Lessons learnt!

Andrew,  drenched to the armpits. Side very sore, ribs not broken but either they or the muscles around there bruised / strained 

The main victim was in Andrew's pocket - his phone was soaked.  He set off on the 4 mile walk into the next town, Stone, to find the phone repair shop. He returned with a new phone, a Samsung A13, which seems pretty capable given its low price, just in time to meet Alison at the Plume of Feathers, a Neil Morrissey Pub, for dinner . And very good it was too, with only a few nods to the Celebrity owner.

On Saturday 28th, we simply stayed put. Andrew's ribs were sore and he's been coming down with Alison's cold, so was feeling less than active. Instead, we started getting our planning heads on as to how the summer will shape up. We have so little experience of the Severn and Avon that we found we had too little data to make any firm decisions and basically thought ourselves to a standstill.

Alison has offered a Plan B where we leave the Lower Severn and Avon for another time and instead go to Worcester and turn onto the Worcester and Birmingham canal. This means we do the Tardebigge flight - 30 locks in one run! But the canal is shadowed by the railway so it will be easy for Andrew to go north to check on mum and for Alison to return to Wales for the concert weekend at end of June. Still under advisement: we will pick up the planning again soon.

By Sunday we realised that we were running low on water, and that that wind had finally calmed down. So off we went towards Stone. At the first lock 2 other boats caught up behind us but then we soon found boats were moving in the other direction so the 7 or 8 locks we were going through were mostly set in our favour (including one where Alison had to do some bawling under a nice echoey bridge to stop a crew turning the lock against us. Fortunately he was quite amenable to stopping the bottom paddles and re opening the top ones.)

Here the towpath has its own tunnel, tall enough for horses, under the main road.

We paused for water on the other side of this lock, moved on down the next lock, and found a good mooring just ahead of the 8th lock.  The programme then is lunch, then a trip to the laundrette. It's the high life for us! But, yet another pleasant outlook, despite being right by the town centre.

In the evening we went on a mini pub crawl. Started at the Star which was pretty lifeless and the beer uninspiring. Then moved to the Swan which had a good atmosphere and beer. Apparently it is the CAMRA pub of the year 2022 so should be good. 

Finished the evening at the Joules tap house where we had some nice food in form of tasters (GF brie bites, chipolatas and sweet potato fries for Alison and loaded nachos for Andrew). 

Alison tried to to have a WhatsApp call with Laura in the pub but was defeated by some loud music. Resumed the call once we got back to the boat...