As this was the day that Andrew was to leave us, we needed to make an early start in order to reach Stoke where he could catch a train back to Worcester. We re-traced our route back to Bosley Flight where there seemed to be a continuous stream of boats in both directions. In 10 out of the twelve lcoks we passed a boat coming up. As a result, progress was a little slower but we still managed to complete the flight in two hours.
There was still another couple of hours back to Halls Green stop lock, a short distance before Hardings Wood where we re-joined the Trent and Mersey.
Our next task was to negotiate the famous Harecastle Tunnel. Keepers control access at either end and we felt fortunate that he estimated about five minutes wait for a boat in transit to emerge - actually it was a little longer but the traffic today was very light and the delay was nothing like the hour we had anticipated!
With all cabin lights blazing we set off: as the southern end has doors closed to help fans extract air from the tunnel, it was a long time before we could see even a glimmer of light. The headroom is much reduced in places but the towpath has now been removed and this made it much easier, albeit still requiring quite a bit of concentration.
South of the tunnel we started to pass through the Five (or Six) Towns of the Stoke-on-Trent conurbation. Much of the industrial past is gradually disappearing and extensive reclamation was in progress on the Shelton site which was once an immense steelworks. (When we came this way 40 years ago we could see the hot molten metal being processed.)
There are still some potteries, however, including a new Steelite factory. A number of the old bottle kilns have been preserve as a reminder of the time when most of this area was devoted to making china, earthenware and porcelain - after all, this was what gave birth to the Trent and Mersey and hence the whole canal network.
At Etruria we turned up the Caldon Canal and immediately tackled the two lock staircase and one more lock before stopping in Hanley Park to allow Andrew to disembark with his baggage mounted on the trolley which he came with - but minus the boxes of wine and beer!
Left now to ourselves, we continued for another hour until we were into a more rural setting for a night mooring.
