(Very) last orders

Please obey licensing laws even when contemplating drowning! (Sign on wall of Star Inn, Stone)

Stoned

Star in Star Lock, Stone

I think I must have been. I really can't remember much of yesterday at all! Basically we drifted up towards Stone (hence the bad pun of the title) in drizzly rain and moored up at the bottom of the four locks there before lunch.
And there we stayed. Stone, according to a town information leaflet picked up at the lock, is "the food and drink capital of Staffordshire". More like the canal capital, with four locks, as many boatyards and plenty of historic canal stuff to see. But canals don't sponsor tourist guides, restaurants and pubs do!
We had home cooked lamb shanks (from the famous Alrewas butcher and very good too) with our on-board stock of booze. Sorry Stone. But we did come away with shopping and a fistful of charity shop paperbacks.
At about 8.00 pm, after a long spell of quiet, a boat came down through the bottom lock and we briefly thought about going through the bottom lock and we briefly thought about going up while they were all in our favour. But only briefly; laziness won out.
A pity; this morning we had to go up the lot in a queue with no-one coming the other way so the full empty and re-fill routine was needed each time. Before the third lock we even fitted in a canal-style pit stop, tanking up with diesel, dumping the rubbish and emptying the toilet - and all before the lock was ready for us!
Ten minutes further on and it was the same game all over again - four more locks and all running against us. Why did I volunteer to do the lock wheeling today.
At the top lock a 'vintage' cycle tourist parked his elderly but quality (Reynolds 531, Campag etc) bike and pulled a flask of tea from his pannier. Then he sat down on the grass and rolled himself a fag! Don't think Bradley Wiggins would have approved...
After all that energetic stuff we moored early by the Wedgwood factory and went for a look around the visitor centre – fascinating stuff but leave your wallet behind unless you're an American or Japanese tourist. Even the greetings cards in the gift shop are expensive!

PS Saw some very nice tugs around Stone -- very jealous of the Roger Fuller built 'Zulu' , ditto of another 'Zephyr', a bit less so of a RW Davis 'Beast' (I sense these as a bit of a 'clique craft'), admiring of a historic ice-breaker tug 'Tardebigge' and finally there was 'Eric Bloodaxe', diminutive and pretty despite the blood curdling name, being lovingly spruced up by its owner – a thoroughly cheerful Kevin Keegan look-alike!

I hate engine runners

Bored by the Edgbaston test as it drifted towards a draw, we untied at Tixall and headed on up the T&M. After the picture postcard delights of Great Haywood the first couple of miles are a scrappy vista of railway line and messy canalside moorings but then the canal opened out into an almost river-like stretch – wide and deep so Star could push along smoothly at little more than tickover.
With the evening clouds closing in we moored at the little village of Weston in a handy slot between two boats. Who immediately started running their engines!
I hate engine runners. If people cruise and keep their batteries charged why so they need to sit at the canalside spoiling everyone's evening with the drum of a running engine? Perhaps so they can work their microwave or other item of domestic crap they've decided is an essential part of boating?
And don't get me on generators!

More walking than boating

A cosy little week-end hideaway

My feet ache! But I've only myself to blame. A short walk turned into a lengthy hike. We moored at Tixall Wide, a lake like section of canal created so the local lord of the manor wouldn't have his view defaced my a mere canal. The house has long gone but the Wide survives. Tough luck m'lord.
A walk down to pretty Tixall Lock found a hire boat sitting in the lock waiting for it to rise – while instead the water poured out the bottom paddles that had been left up. At the helm was a young mum in fashionably large sunglasses, apparently daydreaming of shops and make-up, while young son, Toby, ten if he was a day, and his little sister were in charge of lock duties.
After assistance from the Star team they drifted off, mum still draped languidly over the tiller while Starman and Starwoman gave their suitably male and female verdicts on the incident. "Very brave of her to take two young kids on a boating holiday" mused Starman, basking in the afterglow of his chvalry to a damsel in distress. "Hmmph! Stupid woman; just a stick insect." was Starwoman's retort. Miaaow.
Anyway, on with the walk. Off the canal and up to Milton Common. Then we made the bold decision to strike back across the edge of Shugborough Hall estate (a stately pile once owned by Lord Lichfield but now National Trust) meet the canal and circle back to the boat.
If only we'd known we'd faced a climb to Everest base camp to get up the hillside! At least on the other side of the hill we got a free walk right across the grounds on a public footpath, crossing the Trent on the spectacular stone Essex Bridge (pictured) and finally - via a pint in Great Haywood's village pub - five miles later we were back at the boat.
Knackered - but at least we'd rescued a stick insect...

Starwoman v Morrisons: guess who won?

Don't know about you but if the cut-price packet of mange tout I'd bought for 69p was accidentally rung through at the full £1, I'd be too embarrassed/too lazy to go back and argue.
Not our Vicky who checks her receipts like Sherlock Holmes. Back to the checkout, from which she was forwarded to Customer Services who duly checked and refunded the excess thirty one pee!
The highlight of our stop at Rugeley – which kind of puts the rest of the town in perspective.

The town that gave its name to a toilet

I don't know where the 'Shanks' half came from but Armitage not only gave its name to a toilet, it still makes them in a vast edifice along the side of the canal. Mightily impressive it is too.
Where there's muck, there's definitely brass!

I love meandering through these urban backyards – canals give you a view that streets never can. Mostly of mess and ruin, true, but fascinating all the same. And every now and then, there's a glimpse of a decaying piece of once impressive canalside architecture, like the four-storey Edwardian warehouse we saw a little later at Rugeley. Perhaps it was part of the 'stinking' tannery that Tom Rolt described on his trip - certainly it was near 'Leather Lane'. In another place it would have been 'ripe for conversion' to canalside apartments but here it just died a lingering death. Sad.
Rugeley these days lives in the shadow, metaphorical as well as real, not of a tannery but by the massive cooling towers of its power station, visible from everywhere around.
We pressed on out of the town and, aware of the busy honeypot location that lay ahead at Great Haywood, moored up in open country with distant views of the wooded Cannock Chase - and of the power station.

Ten reasons why it's been p***ing with rain for days

At number 1 (obviously)
Because the Met Office said it would be a heatwave
2. Because British Waterways issued a 'worried about low water levels' press release
3. Because there's an Ashes test series
4. Because loads of Brits worried about the Euro booked UK holidays instead
5. Because I'm trying to take lots of photos
6. Because I only packed tee-shirts
7. Because we bought a barbecue
8. Because it's a government plot to take our mind off swine flu
9. Because we're on a narrowboat cruise.
10. And because a British summer wouldn't be the same without it!