My Trip – Day by Day Blog

Important Info

Planned kilometres: 32 (cummulative 634)

Kilometres walked: 33 (cummulative 675)

% Completed (based on 1800km trip): 37.5%

Weather: Grey

Pubs visited:  The Swan Inn, The Star

Pints: 2 (cummulative 69)

Kms per pint: 9.8

Blisters: 0 (cummulative 3)

 

Acton Trussell to Stoke on Trent

After a relaxing breakfast of Eggs Bennie in the Moat House’s posh restaurant, I put on my warm gear and headed out into a very grey day.

 

Today’s route followed 2 different canals and 2 pathways. I started the day back on the Staffordshire & Worcestershire Canal, then Two Waters Way, Two Saints Way and finally the Trent & Mersey Canal.

 

The additional signage that someone has put on path’s in Stafford don’t really provide the right type of destinations that people are looking for.

The Two Waters Way was marked on google maps, but it was not a pathway that had heard of before however as it was only short I thought I would use it instead of the roads. I was surprised to find that the whole path was a raised bridge. There was a usage counter at the end of the bridge and it showed that I was the 9^th person to use the path that day and the 5402^nd for the year.

The Two Saints Way was more like other paths that I had taken and required walking on roads, through farms, forests and high grass. I was missing the Two Waters Way as soon as I had to start walking through overgrown paddocks.

 

I had been warned by a couple of people that the Trent and Mersey Canal would likely to be a very muddy walk, but the section that I was walking on today wasn’t to bad. The only issue was the very low bridges, some of which were signposted as such. On many of these bridges the height is 4 or 5 feet, so I had to hunch over and use my walking poles to hobble through, much to the amusement of a couple of runners at one bridge,

Stone was my lunch stop for the day and I went to The Swan Inn ordered a pint and then asked if they did food, which I should have asked before I got a pint. They didn’t do food but directed me to The Star across the street for food, so I had a quick pint in The Swan and then lunch and a pint at The Star. The whole ceiling of the The Swan was covered with different beer coasters/labels and there must had been thousands of different ones.

The Trent and Mersey canal had more industrial buildings and I passed the Wedgwood factory which while not exactly photogenic, it’s one thing that the area is famous for.

I met another long-distance walker (easily identifiable by full back pac and walking poles) just out of Stoke on Trent who lived in Highgate Kendall and decided to walk from there to Highgate in London using just canals. His rationale was that he had lived in Highgate Kendall and worked in London and commuted between both via motorway but had never actually seen what was between the two places.