Stoke-on-Trent

7.5 miles and 6 locks

We started off in drizzle and it followed us all day. Warm clothes were found. The captain wore long trousers at the helm for the first time in months.

We passed the Wedgewood factory and round the next bend was Trentham lock and we were welcomed to Stoke-on-Trent.

The locks were deep and some of the surroundings were a bit grim. We met other boats coming the other way and everyone was in their winter gear.

We went past quite a few remnants of the pottery industry, including these bottle kilns, sitting among new developments of canalside flats.

The top lock is just above the old Wedgewood site of Etruria (named after the Etruscan style pots which helped make him famous). The industrial museum now there is run by volunteers apparently and hardly ever open. What a contract to the one in Dudley.

Some of the Etruria site.

Above the Stoke top lock is the junction with the Caldon canal. We had planned to explore this but after engine hold ups and with deteriorating weather we have decided to leave it for another year.

The Caldon on the left and T&M on the right. Etruria's chimney on the middle

This swingbridge is the entrance to the Etruria boatyard.

We passed many derelict industrial buildings, but also the Middleport pottery which still seems to be going and would be worth a visit on another day. We moored by the Westport Lake, originally a collapsed coal mine and now a nature reserve, a mile short of the tunnel.
Tomorrow we will go through the almost 2 mile long tunnel. Then we will start down the Cheshire locks (or Heartbreak Hill as it is known), 27 locks over 7 miles.

There are 86.5miles still to go to our winter mooring.