We had a peaceful night on our mooring at Handsacre and woke up just after six o’clock. We decided to get up and go again after we had taken a look at the guide books and were on our way at 7.15, coffee cups in hands. We had a pleasant cruise around Handsacre and Armitage before drifting out into the countryside where Rugeley power station came into view.  Soon enough we were crawling through Rugeley itself and with no need to stop, we were soon out the other side heading for the junction at Great Haywood. The wind was strengthening as we ascended the two locks that we needed to pass through on the way and was blowing hard as we turned on to the Staffs & Worcs under the bridge. I had hoped to perform a 360 degree turn on Tixall wide but the strong wind prevented this particular “loop the loop”.

The wind continued to blow hard as we made our way in a sort of westerly direction and although we encountered shallows and overgrowing vegetation and a couple of oncoming boats, our trip was a very pleasant and enjoyable affair.

We tied up just before bridge 98 at Radford Bank and after showering went and caught the bus into Stafford. This  potentially mundane journey took a strange turn when the bus driver decided to avoid the traffic congestion caused by road works by taking a shortcut through a housing estate, a radical move but one that got us into the town centre quicker than we would otherwise have done.

We wandered along the main shopping street and eventually found a happy coincidence in that the bus stop that we would need for our return journey was across the road from “The Picture House “, a Wetherspoons no less.

What a fabulous building!

  

Our bus ride back was straightforward and took only a few minutes. We called into the Radford Inn which sits between the bus stop and the towpath and therefore desrved a visit. It is a nice place but we didn’t eat as we were still full after having Sue’s home made pizza for lunch.

We returned to Caxton and settled in for the evening having travelled through three locks in thirteen miles.

Back to the post title, no shattered glass I’m pleased to report although there was nearly a laptop in the cut last night. Last week, I upgraded my trusty laptop to windows 10 and it all worked a treat with the new OS seemingly speeding up the machine. Last night I tried plugging it into the tv to watch the first episode of BBC’s new series of Ripper Street. It didn’t work and I lost the display on both the laptop and the television. Eventually I managed to get Windows back on and displaying but it looks like part of the process has removed all of my installed programmes with no way to get them back.

Be very careful if you are upgrading to Windows 10, especially if you can’t afford to lose your programs and files!