Wild men and animals!!!

Walton Bridge 93, Stone - Westport Lake, Stoke on Trent

Meaford Locks

Was on the move by 9am. We wanted to get to Stoke on Trent today and the day looked as if it might stay dry.  We had two small flights of locks to deal with today.   The first set of 4 right in the centre of Stone.  They were quite close together and didn't take too long to do.  They were noticeably deeper than previous locks we had been in though.  At the centre of the flight, Yog noticed that the Stone Boat Building Chandlery we were passing was a Honda dealer.  Seeing as the pull cord on the genny had given up the ghost the night before seemed the perfect place to get a replacement. Highly recommend this chandlery, had a very good range of supplies and we came out with much more than string for the genny.

The offending article!!

Yog is in a mischievous mood today, I can tell because he has decided to wear his bowler.  Sure enough halfway through the second flight of locks at Meaford he gets off the boat to drop one of the slushes for me.  All of a sudden he shouts 'Ronni Snake!!!' and as I look up I see this red and yellow thing flying towards me!!  I panicked and tried to leap over the gate arm whilst waving my arms about frantically, only to get myself all tangled over it in my vain attempt at a getaway.  Turns out it was a toy snake Yog had spotted in the water in front of the gates.  The git.  


We have sorted puppy a place on the back deck so he can see where he is going, he had to wear his blanky coat though as it is still really cold and it wasn't long before he wanted to go back inside the boat in front of the fire.  By 12.40 the wind was starting to get bad by an hour later it was apx 20mph!!  We were crabbing round the corners at full throttle in some places.  When we  were by an open field the cross wind was really bad almost pushing us into the bank at one point.   As we were approaching Stoke we saw a transit truck driving across one of the fields below us. Probably to check on the horses that were also there and watching the truck with interest.  Yog said 'Thats gonna get stuck,' and just as he was saying it 'yup, there you go, right up to its axles!!' lol  It was a shame we had to carry on really, as we missed how they managed to free themselves, we were just left with the vision of two soaking, mud clad men desperately trying to free their truck from the mud.  Cheered us up, just goes to show, things could have been worse lol.  

How deep???

We arrived at Stoke at 2.30pm we were cold and both in need of tea so that was the first job once the boat was secure.  The whole point of going to Stoke was to do some laundry, but after some discussion and a bit of compromise from both parties, we agreed to press on today.  I would leave the laundry for another day and have tomorrow OFF in exchange for pressing on to try and reach the Macclesfield.  I agreed and we went for it.
We had 5 locks, and they were DEEP!  Unfortunately for me, the last lock had a handcuff key on it and I couldn't work out where to put the key to unlock it!!  Yog had already reversed out of the lock (not a happy bunny) and tied up the boat before I hollered 'Done It!!' with more relief than I can put into words.  

Yog before I told him I couldn't work the handcuff key!!

After the delay caused by my little mishap we didn't think we would get to Harecastle Tunnel in time so I asked my Facebook Boaty Pals where the best place to moor would be.  My answer was delivered to me through the airways 'Westport Lake'.  We tied up about 6.30pm and I looked forward to my DAY OFF!!


Therefore next blog will be for Monday cos I'm going to be asleep all day!!!