Our Journey Begins.

Our big holiday adventure for the year brings us back to the water and a week long trip down the Trent and Mersey. We arrived at the hire base after lunch, just as the cleaner had finished getting everything ready.
Festival Park Marina is on the site of the National Garden Festival which was held in 1986. Before that it was a steel works with blast furnaces. Directly opposite the marina is the site of the Etruria Works. Opened in 1769 this was the Wedgwood factory until around 1940 when the works were moved to their present site.

As we have been with Black Prince before the hand over was relatively brief and we were on our way by 14:45, on our boat Erin. Heading south from the marina, Etruria Junction is just 10 minutes away, the left hand branch is the start of the Caldon Canal. We stuck with the Trent and Mersey and with it our first lock and the first of five in quick succession! Also at the junction was our first taste of Potteries architecture, the Etruscan Bone Mill. Sarah resumed her role as chief lock wheeler while Edward enjoyed standing on deck with the skipper.
The scenery through this part of Stoke-On-Trent is distinctly urban and not somewhere we would like to stop for any length of time. The railway passes overhead the canal on a low, wide bridge which caused the skipper to duck!
A couple of bottle kilns sit by the side of the canal, a reminder of the industry for which this area is best known. After the hard work of the locks Edward and Sarah relaxed in the well deck, from which Edward fed some geese.

The canal winds its way out of Stoke and past the site of Hem Heath Colliery, the third deepest in the UK until its closure in 1993. It is just beyond here, on the outskirts of Trentham, that we moored for the night.Læs mere