Wednesday 1st August 2007
Location: Stockton Brook, Staffs
Today: 10 miles, 4 lock. Total distance: 326 miles. Total locks: 297
Warm and sunny in the morning, cloudy in the afternoon.
Headed down through Stoke on Trent and up the Caldon canal.
Stopped at the Royal Doulton factory shop and had a look around. Nothing in there that we can not live without. Some lovely glass ware but we would be to afraid to use it at the prices being charged. Some lovely stuff though.
On exiting the second lock on the Caldon, a boat just about to enter warned us of a hire boat heading towards us in a hurry and to watch out as the stretch of canal is very twisty. We duly proceeded at a very slow pace until we caught site of the hire boat bow coming around a blind corner at a fair rate of knots. Sounded our horn but he was going far to fast to stop. He hit us a fair crack, knocking over ornaments inside our boat. In an attempt to minimise the impact, I knocked the engine into full reverse so that we were actually moving backward when they hit us. The gut driving the hire boat refused to accept that he was going far to fast and that the boat that had warned us about him was wrong also. I took a photo of the boat and would have informed the hire company only when I later looked at the photo on the computer, there was no indication of who the hire company is.
To make matters worse, in the attempt to reverse away from the idiot, we picked up something around the prop that stopped us being able to move. Got the boat into the side, opened the weed hatch to find a care tire completely around the prop!! It took a good twenty minutes to get the tire off the prop but I was unable to get the tyre out of the water so it is still on the bottom of the canal waiting for some other poor boater to come along.
Anyway, now on the Caldon and once we got outside Stoke, the canal has entered some lovely countryside.
Canal side garden in Stoke
The hire boat that hit us
A bit of old Stoke on Trent
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Material Copyright © 2007 Ernie Williams
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2 May, 2014 4:59 PM