This morning we moved the boat down to Etruria Junction, where the Caldon Canal branches off to Froghall. We are moored between the Etruria Industrial Museum and a statue of James Brindley, canal engineer.

Looks like Brindley is popular with the local pigeons, who are probably in the pay of the geese. The Etruria Industrial Museum has the only working steam driven bone mill in the world. It was used to grind up animal bones for bone china, but unfortunately they only open up the museum and raise steam one weekend a month, that was last weekend so I have no pictures to show you.

We spent a couple of hours doing laundry in the worst launderette in the West Midlands, possibly the entire country. No attendant, no change machine, half of the machines marked as out of order, and several other dryers out of order but not marked as such, which you don’t find out until they have taken your money. No number to call with complaints, either. To add insult to injury it had started raining by the time our laundry was (mostly) dry, and we had a ten minute walk in the rain dragging suitcases of laundry to get back to the boat. Next boat we live on will have a washer and dryer.

After a late lunch and some folding and sorting, I set off for central Hanley, while Paula got some rare alone time. The six towns of The Potteries are littered with pottery kilns.

Local deposits of coal and clay made this natural center for pottery production since the 1600s, but the industry got a big boost with the coming of the canal in 1777. This allowed the cheap export of finished goods to other parts of the country, and the import of high quality clay from other regions, including china clay from Cornwall. In fact the first sod of the canal was cut by the potter Josiah Wedgwood, who built a factory here at Etruria.

The more recent architecture is more colorful.

That splash of color was intended to be city hall, but there were construction issues and a change in city government, so it is currently looking for a buyer or tenants.

Downtown Hanley has a branch of Forbidden Planet (a store for nerds and fen) that stocks Dalek stuffies in several different sizes. Look, there is something intrinsically wrong with this! Daleks are implacable interstellar warriors armed with death ray and toilet plunger, and dedicated to the extermination of of anything that is not a dalek. They are not something that kiddies should be snuggling up to in bed. What if they see a real dalek and run up to give it a hug, instead of screaming in terror and hiding behind the sofa?

I spent a few minutes in The Potteries Museum, though we both plan to go tomorrow morning. One of the highlights of their collection is a selection from the Staffordshire Hoard, a collection of Anglo-Saxon gold and jewelry discovered by a metal detectorist in 2009. Here are a couple of pieces, probably sword decorations.

The pieces are still being worked on by the archeologists.

Then in the room next door, there is a Spitfire.

Let’s not worry about chronology, history is history.

On the way back to the boat I saw this.

No, it’s not a Banksy. There was a Banksy exhibit at The Potteries Museum in 2009, which apparently inspired a local imitator, Professor Pigment aka PROPIG aka DODDZ. His work is popular locally, and there is an art trail featuring the highlights.

Finally this.

Your guess is as good as mine