Stoke-on-Trent

It is Sunday again and we have left the Caldon Canal, passed through Etruria and are well on our way to Tixal Wide.

We encountered some very strange things on the Caldon, at Froghall is the famous tunnel, where to pass through your boat has to be less than 5 feet above water line at the roof and less than 5 feet wide at roof top. My guess is that less than 5% of boats are that small! So someone has spent £2,000,000 building a new lock and restoring a basin, now fitted with floating mooring jetties as well!! Equally silly is the services block; they are all on the far side of the tunnel and therefore inaccessible!

On our way back to Etruria we met Sid, of Sid & Joyce fame, Half past four, now members of the Stoke-on-Trent Boat Club.

We are comfortably moored, almost out side the Wedgwood factory, a few miles and locks above Stone, which we may get to tomorrow. This morning we came down the Stoke flight, which finished in a new tunnel under some new road junction, the tunnel is single width, has a bend in it and boats travelling south have right of way. BW canal builders can never have used a boat!

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