More bloggers met…..

While we were up at Leek we met Paul of Waterways Routes fame.  Paul was up the Caldon filming for a new DVD.  Not much filming going on then as he said he was trying to film only when the sun was out – we haven’t seen much of that this week!

We have also been also stalking Adam on nb Debdale.  After corresponding intermittently for several months we finally met up today – 3 times!!  We were moored at Milton last night, ready to make our dash for the T & M today, and Adam and friends came past us at some ungodly hour this morning.

We then caught them up and passed them at Hanley as they were dropping off a crew member to go and get a hire car.  Then they caught us up at the water point at Etruria.  We were beginning to wonder who was stalking who!!  No more meetings now, however, as they turned north at Etruria Junction, and we turned south, travelling back to Great Hayward, where we have an engine service booked for Tuesday at Anglo Welsh.  They are Isuzu experts as all the hire boats have one. We have decided that while the engine is still under guarantee, we will have the servicing done by the experts.  If anything goes wrong with it we don’t want to have invalidated the guarantee by Rog doing it.

We had a trouble-free run off the Caldon this morning, and are now moored on the T & M at Barlaston for the night.  The moorings are fairly rammed here as there isn’t much available at Stone.  We hear that the visitor moorings and beyond are all taken up with Boaters Christian Fellowship boats, all there for a meeting over the weekend.  We had hoped to stop there tomorrow afternoon as we need to do a supermarket shop, but that may not be possible now – we will have to wait and see.

  A few more photos:

Two pretty footbridges at Hanley Park – there was also a bandstand, but too much in the way for a photo

Various flora growing on the gates of the staircase lock at Etruria

Rog heading for the water point