On my travels, I've sketched out plots and made navigational notes for some more adventures for Daphne Randall, my narrowboat-dwelling amateur sleuth, and completed the first draft of her next, an old-fashioned whodunit which unfolds along the Trent and Mersey Canal between Fradley Junction and Shardlow. With Stoke-on-Trent bidding to be City of Culture 2021, here's an extract from the first chapter in which Daphne and her crew set off through Stoke-on-Trent, in the spring of 2015, en route to the last match of the season at what was then the Britannia Stadium. I hope it gives a flavour of the canal corridor through the city and its under-appreciated charms!
Harry brought my tea up as we were chugging through Longport, passing the first of the bottle kilns visible from the canal, which peeps out from behind a tumbledown brick factory and stands in a squalid yard scattered with junk. Under the road bridge, boats line the wharf of a busy boatyard, some for brokerage sitting on blocks out of the water, showing their dumpy black hulls. Beyond the stone-faced chandlery is Steelite’s robust, modern, red-brick factory, quiet for the weekend and thoughtfully reflected in the still pool of a wide winding hole. No old-fashioned potbank this although, only a gentle curve ahead, is Burleigh’s Middleport Pottery, a Victorian survivor rescued from redundancy.
‘Did I ever tell you that was where I first saw this boat?’ I asked Harry.
‘You did, duck. At least twice. And that funny story about your mum and the coach party.’
Just past the restored pottery, the waterside warehouses fall to desperate disrepair again, the fine brickwork braced with iron struts yet still crumbling. I gave the building as wide a berth as I dared, knowing the cut beside it was full of debris.
‘Take the tiller for a bit, pet. I’ll wash the mugs up and look in on the dog.’
Custer was snoozing contentedly in the cosy warmth of the cratch, betraying Harry’s soft-heartedness with the dusting of dog-biscuit crumbs by his snout. I couldn’t be angry with either of them.
Harry brought us around the long, sweeping curve to Festival Park, through an open post-industrial landscape which once blazed with hot light and fire as the Shelton Bar steel works. He checked his watch. The carvery pub by the marina does all-you-can-eat breakfasts and Harry was feeling peckish, but he opted to press on.
‘I’ll get an oatcake from Kay’s boat when we get to the Brit,’ he decided, steering us on under the noisy A53.
Before we reached the first lock, the deep one at Etruria, I fetched Custer from the cratch and brought him back to the rear cabin. Harry and I are both careful boaters and take locks cautiously but you can never eliminate all risk of mishap in them and I was haunted by the thought of the poor little chap being trapped where we couldn’t reach him in the event of a problem. When I dropped Harry off with his windlass, I moved Custer into the engine room, closing the doors of the stern hatch with me outside.
There was a boat coming up. Harry was chatting to a woman as they worked the paddles together, filling the chamber and lifting her boat and partner up to my level. Harry opened the gate and the woman stepped back onto her narrowboat. The couple waved as they passed me.
‘Where are they off to?’ I asked Harry, as I drew level with him.
‘Through Harecastle and out into Cheshire as soon as they can. They’re doing the Four Counties.’ He seemed downcast. ‘I was telling them about some of the things there are to see here - the potteries, the museums, the pubs - but they weren’t really interested. They said other people told them Stoke was a dump and they shouldn’t hang about.’
Harry seemed to take that personally. As he wound me through the deep lock and the one below, he made a point of showing me the pale and pretty briar roses in the hedgerow which flanked the towpath, of listening appreciatively to the clear songs of the blackbirds and smiling at the dainty, cheeping blue-tits fluttering through leaves made luminous lime by the sunlight shining through them. He praised the restoration of the bone mill at the museum and the devotion of its volunteers, the quality of the towpath, upgraded as part of the national cycle network, and even the artistic merits of some of the graffiti. I hadn’t the heart to point out that on every other run through this section, he had been the first to grumble about the litter, dog mess, speeding cyclists, tumble-down buildings and mindless spray-painted tags.
Harry was still maintaining this spirited defence of his city when we reached Lock 37, a desolate sight as it cowered in the shadow of the paint-daubed railway bridge. I thought he would be thwarted by that but I had under-estimated him.
‘It was about here that I first figured out that I fancied you,’ he said with a grin of fond reminiscence, pushing the gate closed behind me. ‘I reckon I’ll always have a soft spot for this place.’
He leaned across and kissed me.
I smiled as I watched him set his windlass to the spindle and await my signal to turn. If Harry could find a place in his heart for lock 37, there was surely nothing that could make him fall out of love with his home town. I was lucky to have earned a similar level of devotion.
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