After a long day+ of travel, we arrived for our first night in Stoke-on-Trent. We really enjoy traveling by train in England. Trains are clean, quiet, comfortable and reliable. From Heathrow, we took a train into London, then another to Stoke-on-Trent. We had some time to kill between those trains, so we took a stroll through Regent’s Park and Queen Mary’s Garden. Wonderful gardens, even this early in the year. It must be spectacular when all of the roses are in bloom!
Making Stoke-on-Trent our first night stop meant just a short train ride in the morning to pick up our boat. Little did we know that Stoke-on-Trent is the home to Spode pottery. The Spode factory closed in 2009, but another local company is still producing the wares. We visited the Spode Museum and picked up a couple of original pieces in the museum store.
Friday morning’s train ride dropped us off in the middle of nowhere at the Prees train station. A test of the UK SIM card was successful in procuring a taxi to take us the last few miles to the marina. We had a nice lunch at the marina cafe while they readied our boat. Boaters are a friendly bunch, and we had a nice chat with Trevor, who lives full-time on his boat. He gave us some good tips on mooring spots and pubs to try.
After a short tour of the boat and a bit of instruction, we were off! It was a cold and rainy start to our trip, but fun nonetheless. We quickly got the feel for steering the boat, and motored on for a few hours until we reached the village of Ellesmere. While we passed few boats on our way, the section of canal at Ellesmere was busy with many boats moored for the night (or even longer).
We found a good spot a short walk from the Tesco supermarket – and the rain had stopped and sun was peeking through the clouds. We stocked up on provisions for the next several days and settled in for the night with a boat cooked dinner. We’ll make most of our meals onboard, and stop a few times at local spots as we travel along.
There are a LOT of sheep in this part of the country. Here are some of our neighbors across the canal. The lambs were having fun and venturing to the edge of the canal to check us out. I hope we see them again in the morning before we set off.
