Towards Severn

Friday 3rd June and we are in Stafford. A large shopping centre! In early to pick up the repaired phone then a mooch before going to the cinema: Top Gun Maverick. The town centre was busy with a live music stage and stalls in the big Central Square, and lots of interesting architecture. 
This looks like a converted / extended market hall but was built in 1892 as a meeting house for The Oddfellows.
Opposite is a properly old building, now housing the museum:
Oldest of all, the foundations of a Norman Chapel above a Saxon foundation:
By now, we were hungry and found a tiny cafe called Patties an Ting. Jamaican food.. we reckoned rice and beans would be gluten free, and so it was, along with jerk chicken and proper home made coleslaw.. delicious. An interesting implement on show:
It's for crushing cane to extract cane sugar. And yes, it's still in regular use.

We also saw where the river comes in to town. It would certainly be a pleasant detour although much dredging would be needed. A few pics:
A fine and roomy bridge on the outskirts
The river in its flood plain
and coming into town. Further on there is park, where we imagine moorings and a winding hole would be planned.

Back aboard, Andrew was pleased to see that the data held on his phone and not backed up to the cloud was still there. However, it's not accepting phone calls or texts! Bu@@er! We can't waste any more time on this and must put it down to experience.

An early start on Jubilee Saturday,  planning on a 7 hour cruise before the weather turns horrid on Sunday. Andrew's ribs are still sore after a week so Alison remains on lock duty.

1st lock of the day, and set for us! 

The canal route is largely rural today, except for the constant company of the M6, mostly invisible but always audible:
One of the locks, Longford Lock, was in dazzlingly new condition, having had a recent overhaul:
At the others though there was quite an array of textures of old brick and stonework.
Many of the locks on this stretch were first overhauled in the 1930s. The gate hinge fixings still going strong.
We paused for water at the top of Penkridge village, and found that the previous boat had left their keys behind. Alison went haring off to catch them just as they were leaving the next lock. When Vegvisir arrived, the transfer of windlass from boat to shore went wrong. Into the canal it went, so having got through the lock Alison went back with a strong magnet to fish it back out again. 

Didn't take long, and we went on a few hundred metres to pause for a quick trip to the Co-op. Immediately on return, we were off again, with the last four locks and three miles to cover, to get to Gailey Wharf and its Tower House.
We were not sorry to moor up a couple of hundred metres further along. 3pm is quite late enough to be Navigating!

Later in the evening we received an alert from the navigation authority that one of the locks we had gone through earlier had been damaged by a careless boater and is now out of operation! Lucky that we had pushed on further today than we normally would.

Sunday 5th and pelting rain as advised (though no thunder). So we stayed put and lit the fire (I know, June, right?). and snoozed like a pair of old crumblies. Monday we are doing another long day and onto waters not hitherto sailed by us: the southern part of Staffs and Worcs canal, through Wolverhampton and beyond.

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