Dan, Erika and Lucas Visit - Part 2

Saturday 7th Sepember, 2013 in Stoke-on-Trent.
A Mandarin Duck presented himself at breakfast time. Very colourful but also very solitary - he appeared to be a "Norman No Mates".

After breakfast, all five of us visited the Doulton Outlet and had coffee in the little cafe. Much to Dan's relief, they couldn't find any wine glasses that they really liked!

Back on MM, we set off north towards the Harecastle Tunnel where we intended to turn around to face south again. There was a queue of boats waiting to go through the tunnel and when the Tunnel Keeper heard that we wanted to turn he said rather sourly that we would have problems turning a 60 footer while the boats were queueing and it would be an hour and a half before they left, then he walked off. A shame, because the other keepers that we have met have been helpful, friendly adn cheerful. As usual, however, all the people on the boats were very helpful and with a bit of pushing from their side and Dan on the far bank helping on the bow rope, we managed to turn with just two inches to spare!

We moored up at Westport Lake for lunch, after which Lucas did some steering and we cruised down to Middleport Pottery where Erika and Dan were able to see a very different type of pottery.

We continued down towards Stoke Railway Station, but after three locks we moored up in a very pleasant spot by two beautifully preserved old bottle kilns opposite the cemetery. M pegged out the washing while R walked up to the station with Erika, Dan and Lucas.

There used to be over 2,000 bottle kilns in Stoke but now there are only about 35 and it is sad to see that so many of them are in a very poor state of repair. They are all Grade II listed now- but that doesn't mean that anyone is looking after them. We were told that last month another one fell down through neglect. So it was nice to see that these two bottle kilns had obviously been renovated and are being maintained as part of the housing development.

Today: 7 miles, 3 locks and 5.9 hours.
Trip: 375 miles, 294 locks and 308.2 hours.