Beyond Stoke on Trent.

Our first major city since Leicester, however Stoke on Trent is more open and modern. There are still a few old bottle kilns in evidence.There are five locks in the Stoke flight and when we arrived at the first there was a queue of three boats. We were informed that they had been there for an hour and a half. We arrived just as British waterways staff had just freed the bottom paddles on the bottom gates.Apparently a piece of wood had jammed them. So we took our turn and worked our way up the flight then stopped for lunch.
After lunch we pushed on toward the Harecastle Tunnel. On the way we past a boat yard with a lift bridge at the entrance. When we arrived at the tunnel we had a wait of about forty minutes while boats came in the opposite direction(this tunnel is only one boat wide). Harecastle Tunnel is 2926yds in lengh and it takes around forty minutes to go through it.
The water is a strange orange colour in this area due to a local ironstone strata.
Back in the sun shine we went up to Hardings Wood junction, where we turned left onto the Macclesfield Canal, although the canal then goes right Over the Trent and Mersey which has dropped down two locks. Just after this aqueduct we moored for the night. This has been our longest day for a week.

Watford Gap

Everything seems to happen in one day. Setting off this morning we soon arrived at watford locks(these are just past Watford Gap services on the M1. We reported to the lock keeper and he put us in the queue.There are seven locks in the Watford flight, of these numbers three to six are a staircase.(our first set). This means the top gate for one lock is the bottom gate of the next lock. It's all very complicated at first sight, but once you've been through a set it all seems so simple and very clever.
Our next first for this trip was Crick tunnel. This is 1528yds long and seens to go on forever. As we were going through I got a shower from the drips off the roof. Sould have wore my hat and coat.
We then moored up and went for lunch at a nice restaurant called The Edward. After lunch we walked into Crick village and went to the Primary School fete. Finally moored up out in the country. No tele tonight could not get a picture.