Rowkin Rovings Blog

We think we are finally caught up on sleep and back on schedule. Jet lag doesn’t seem to affect dogs!? Spent the morning doing a final few errands like obtaining a spare tube for the bikes and those items we forgot on our shop from yesterday. One of the things we remember doing a lot when we last did a canal cruise five years ago was become very British and drink lots of tea. One cannot have a hot cup of good olde English tea unless it is in a bone china cup so we splashed out at a store in Stone for two rather large tea cups. This particular store only sold tea cups – wouldn’t have thought you could make a living out of a store that only sold teacups but there you go.

It required three hours of time to set up the internet and phone and to figure how to track usage which was somewhat frustrating. We are all set to go on that now (Fraser says maybe!). It cost us about £40 for 15Gb of data to use within 12 months. Not sure if that is good or bad but it is what it is.

We headed out of the marina at Stone at 1.30pm and went north up the Trent and Mersey canal for three hours cruising to a place called Barlaston. We are smack bang in the center of the pottery area of England where all the fine bone china use to be made and then shipped by canal to Liverpool and Manchester to be sent around the world. The raw products such as the clay was also shipped in by canal to the potteries. Those days are now long gone with Wedgewood now being made in Thailand. We encountered four locks and it took a little while to get into the rhythm of it but by the end of the cruising we were back to being dab hands. Forgot just how slowly canal boating is. You just can’t hurry anywhere. It might take us a little longer than we thought to actually catch up to the slow pace as we were pretty frenetic before we left Canada.

The pooches spent the time cruising on the back of the boat securely tied up and just took it all in their stride. There is no freaking out, shaking or panting. We are very happy with the way they are handling things. They have discovered rather quickly that they are in the position of ultimate power as they bark at every dog on the towpath.

We discovered that once we had moored for the evening that we had left a clothes hanging item back at the marina where the bags are stored. Now this is where the bikes came into their own. Fras leapt on his trusty machine and ½ hour later he was back in Stone retrieving the offending item.

Another day of beautiful weather with sunshine and then a little cooling at night. This just can’t last……..