Shore Leave & The Great Oatcake Grab

Wednesday morning and we awoke to rain, nothing too heavy, the drizzly stuff, you know, wet rain. Our day's schedule is to turn the boat around just beyond our overnight mooring in Penkridge, then head back to Stafford, approx a 3 hour journey. The Captain has granted the crew shore leave for the day, to explore the pubs of Stafford. We have visited Stafford before and have some favourites to revisit. 

Yesterday, by October standards was a very busy day on the canal, it might have been the sunshine that brought all the fair weather boaters out, but this meant that we had a few delays at the several locks we passed through. Although we helped several people to fill and empty the locks, the knock on effect was that we lost time against our schedule and we had to miss our planned stop at the Bod in Baswich. We did however make it to Penkridge in good time and had a few beers in the Littleton Arms, before returning back to the boat for meatballs in goulash sauce and some red wine.

For the people that are saying hang on a bit, how on earth do you turn a 58' narrowboat round when the width of the canal is less than the length of the boat? Well, it's a good question, you have to keep going until you find a winding hole, (that's a short 'I' as in wind as opposed to a long 'I' as in wind). A winding hole is a widening of the canal and you put the front of the boat into the expanse of water and use the motor on the back to swing the boat around.  We've been debating today where the word winding comes from and according to Wikipedia it's because the wind is used to help swing the boat round - I'm not sure how true that is as surely it depends on which way the wind is blowing and the last thing you need when completing this move is a strong cross wind against you. The one thing I do know is that it is a tricky manoeuvre to perform, best left to the Captain.

Our visit to Stafford always has one significant highlight, which is a visit to Ye Olde Rose and Crown. It's a brewery tap for Joule's brewery, but the main reason for our visit there is that they sell Staffordshire Oatcakes on their lunch menu. If you've never had Staffs Oatcakes you've never lived. They are becoming increasingly difficult to find around where I live, so this was indeed going to be a special treat. Unfortunately when we got to the pub it was closed due to Covid, a major disappointment. Still after visiting 3 other pubs, of which the Sun (a Titanic pub) was the star (if you know what I mean) we paid a visit to Sainsbury's and cleared the shop of all their oatcakes. So I now have a supply to keep me going for a good few months. Bizarrely Oatcakes are not on the Protected Regional Food list, but Staffordshire cheese is, I've never had a desire to visit Staffordshire for their cheese, but an Oatcake is Staffordshire on a plate for me. 

It's the penultimate day of our holiday tomorrow and the big push. We plan to head back to Great Haywood and turn left along the Trent & Mersey back to Stone for our overnight stop, approx 7 hours travelling. This will leave us a short hop back to the marina on Friday morning. Hoping for better weather tomorrow.

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