The Hodma'dod: A relaxing time?

As I mentioned in the last post we moved on to the mooring where we had walked up to Mow Cop and were really lucky with the weather as it was glorious and we had a couple of days there doing very little.

We then moved on to go onto the Caldon which meant a long day as we had no wish to moor up in Stoke and also we had to go through the Harecastle tunnel. This tunnel has controlled traffic so at least one is not faced with something coming the other way but never the less I find tunnels very stressful. You are in complete darkness except for the headlight and have very little room for manuvour so have to concentrate the whole time and not let the boat go off the straight line. Headroom is limited and its very wet with water dripping from the roof. I think the tunnel is nearly 3000 yards long and takes about 45 minutes to get through. A very welcome relief to get out into the sunshine at the other end.

We then headed down through Stoke and up the Caldon not a journey I'd want to make on a dull wet day - it was depressing enough in the sun. We had planned to visit the Industrial museum at Etruria (always sounds like an African third world country to me rather than an area of Stoke) but found that it was permanently closed so we headed up to spend the night at Milton. Not a bad mooring but for some reason I couldn't get our mooring hooks to fit and had to end up tying up on some old rope we had, just kept my fingers crossed that it would not fray overnight and to add to that concern whilst I was walking the dogs Sarah had a strange teenager stick his head in through the duck hatch and ask for a conducted tour of the boat! We made sure everything was securely locked that night! We woke up safe and secure so no harm done. We went and did the shopping in town but found it to be a rather depressing place and hoped that things would look up as we continued on.

The next night was fine and then we moved on to the Leek arm. Although only a short arm and supposedly very underused we had probably the most fraught couple of hours cruising of the whole summer. We had just turned on to the arm when a day boat pulled out from the bank right in front of using making me apply reverse quite severely and then they continued at a snails pace. Then at one point they found themselves in a narrow part of the canal opposite a moored boat with another coming towards them and panicked and pulled into the side giving the approaching boat very little room to get through and me to apply reverse again. Then about a mile further on rounding a bend at little more than tick over I found another boat approaching me on my side. I pulled over as far as possible and we missed each other by inches but it left me grounded and it took a fair few minutes to extricate ourselves. So much for a quiet peaceful arm!

We eventually and moored at what one of the guidebooks describes as "one of the most charming moorings on the system" Well, it was pleasant enough but I think that was a bit over the top. The following day, Monday, we carried on to the end of the arm at Leek and went in to this charming town although its a bit of a hike and through a large industrial area at first.

Tomorrow we start to retrace our steps and then try the other arm and head towards Froghall. There is a very low tunnel at the end of that arm to get into the basin and given our experience of this canal so far I don't think I'm going to attempt it.