Saturday - Hall Green to Barlaston - 7 locks, 1 tunnel, 12.5 miles

Mike and Liz arrived at 9:00 and we were off.

It was a cold but beautiful day.

Luckily as it was Saturday there was no dredging work to hold us up and we were soon at the entrance to the Harecastle tunnel.  The tunnel is 2926 yards long and takes about 40 mins to get through and is only wide enough for one boat, so time it wrong and you have a long wait to go through, surprisingly we were able to go straight in.

After 40 mins in the dark, we finally saw light at the end of the tunnel and the tunnel keeper waiting for us.

We cruised on towards Stoke.  George was very happy sitting on Liz's lap.

As we got to Stoke it was great to have help at the locks.

As we came through Stoke at various points there was evidence of the old potteries.

We moored not far from the most famous of them all.

We took George for a last walk and were lucky enough to see a Kingfisher, the third one today.  We also saw the most beautiful Mandarin duck.

We were then spoilt with most beautiful sunset.