Pottering through the potteries

We left the 'Festival' on Sunday morning and joined the queue of other escapees waiting to lock down.  It took a while but we were glad to get away.  Imagine a rather low average village fete with a few narrow boats and that was it. What's more there were no painted flowery watering cans and the beer was average.  On top of that we were on a busy towpath with every man and his dog looking in on us.  So off we pottered and stopped in the spot in the photo below.  Very pretty and quiet.  Had I actually taken a shot from the other direction you would have seen the word 'Wedgewood' on top of a very large building.  Guess what?  Its where they make pottery.  Actually the Trent And Mersey canal was built for the pottery industry and Mr Wedgewood himself was one of its sponsors.  Fi went off to the museum and factory shop and came back with some really nice pasta bowls (shame they had the words 'TESCOS Homeware' on the back).  We won't tell any guests, just that they are the real thing, as long as I can get the stickers off..  We're now in the little town of Stone a couple of hours further on and its very picturescue.  Now that we have some idea of our progress we've decided not to do Birmingham as it involves 20 locks to get in and of course the same ones to get out.  Also I do want to get to London to do the tidal Thames, so we're heading off to the Grand Onion to head south.

An idyllic spot with loads of people making pottery behind me.