After an action packed 10 days moored in Stone, which saw us sticking on the solar panels, witnessing a near disaster at Meaford Locks, and taking advantage of us still having our car to explore a little further afield, we were ready move on. I drove the car back to our daughter’s- who had lent it to us back in January for all our toing and froing and utilised my brand new rail card to catch the train back to the boat. Was normality about to be restored? at least the water levels seemed to be OK.
Or so we thought.
There are 4 locks in Stone. As we passed through the first, we noticed the replacement beam was not made of the traditional oak but a plank laminate. Questions were raised about its durability, but at least for now it didn’t look like it was going to collapse.
We passed through Star lock, where, at the Star Inn, James Brindley and his investors met to plan the construction of the Grand Trunk Canal, now the Trent and Mersey Canal. We had gone in earlier to pay homage, where we discovered that, not only was the Star Inn famous for its canal building patrons, it also has an entry in the Guinness book of records for having the most floor levels of a public house. 13 – which is due to subsidence- which doesnt sound healthy for a canal. (Or for anyone having had one too many)
We knew the water levels were still low, but as Eric tried to drive the boat out of the lock, we all heard a horrible crunching. Were we caught on the bottom? Not knowing quite what was underneath of us, I closed the gates and let a few inches of water back into the lock, sufficient to refloat us. And then enlisted some passers by to lend me their muscle power to re open the gates for us to escape. We think there must have been a stone that was just proud enough to catch us, cause after a moments panic, we were OK. The lock needed dredging, and although I did report our incident, CRT are running in crisis management mode and there’s no time or money for preventative action. After a quick stop at the M&S water point, which ironically was fast flowing and easy, we were on our way. The next mile down to Aston Lock was hard work, we needed to keep in the middle of the channel otherwise we were scraping the bottom. Passing boats was a struggle but the word coming up was that the levels were improving.
Due to intense conversation with the upcoming boater – comparing notes about water levels of course, I forgot to take a photo of the mile marker. Aston Lock is the half way point on the T&M. 46 miles to both Preston Brook and Shardlow.
We were travelling on just another half hour because the storm clouds were gathering and we’d had enough excitement for one day. Even the sheep were heading for home
Yes that looks a good mooring
And we made it just in time to tie up before the heavens opened.