Onward to Stone.

Hi Folks.

What a stonking start to the day. I was standing on the back counter at around 6.45 am this morning watching the sunrise. A Kingfisher flew past announcing it was going fishing for its breakfast and the cows in the field opposite were stretching, having gotten up from a damp field. It was so calm and peaceful.

As the sun rose higher in the sky the mist began to roll along the cut, bringing its mystery with it and making it all feel rather mystical.

Once we were up and about, Paddy and I went for our first walk of the day, where a calf was having its breakfast.

On the walk back to the boat, I spotted Cormorants in an dead tree sunning themselves, so having fed the animals I was off with my camera in the hope the Cormorants were still there.

I was in luck they were still there waiting to have their photograph taken, my only problem was finding a gap in the over grown hedge to get a photograph.

Hadar looked very mystical in the mist.
At 9.25 am we left our over night mooring and headed towards Aston Lock, behind narrow boat Autumn Wine. We rose up through Aston Lock and onward into Stone, where luck would have it we found one mooring big enough for us, right below Star Lock.

After some lunch, we closed the boat up and went for a stroll in Stone to see what had changed since our last visit.

The Crown and Anchor has had a repaint and I cannot say I like it at all. It has lost all its character in my opinion.

This is how it used to look.
Stone is certainly not the town we remember, when Hadar was being built. It has lost its soul and has been taken over by charity shops. In such a small canal side town there are at least nine charity shops. Now you all know we love charity shops, but this many in such a small town is to many, again in my opinion. Stone is now a town of places to eat, hairdressers and charity shops, which is a shame.