Thursday 3rd August 2017

Last night about 8.30pm the lady from the next boat, whom we had been talking to earlier, knocked on the door and asked if we had seen the fire. Shoes on, quick trip to lake side and sure enough a large fire was burning at the other end of the lake. Passing locals speculated about what was burning and it turned out that they were all incorrect as this morning the news reported that it was wooden pallets and sleepers. We could smell something burning but luckily the wind was blowing the smoke in the opposite direction. 

We set off towards Stoke passing one of the remaining bottle kilns, which were such a distinctive part of the landscape before most of the potteries closed.

Middleport pottery has been transformed into a visitor attraction with tours and heritage parts of the site open. When we first passed 4 years ago there was nothing going on. Today we looked around the Heritage section and next time we will book a tour of the working pottery. Our guide was very knowledgeable. The bottle kilns which you see from the outside are only the outer building with an inner kiln which was stacked with 'saggers' containing the pottery for firing. This photo shows some of them stacked inside.

Here you can see the two layers of a kiln where the fire was stoked from between the layers.

Metal bands helped to support the structure.

Thousands of mounds were found in the old pottery. Here are just a few of them.

The finished product is about 10% smaller as it shrinks during firing. Well worth a visit here if you are going to be near.

We set off down the canal and after filling with water at Etruria started the Stoke Locks at 2.45pm. We are now moored at Barlaston with lots of other boats. It is a popular site and we usually try to get here quite early but we managed to squeeze in again due to Graham's great parallel parking!

We had planned to barbecue tonight, but it is rather breezy and too cold outdoors. Ah, the wonderful British summer - where has it gone?