Author Topic: Two sides of a city along the Cauldon Canal.  (Read 825 times)

AWC71

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Two sides of a city along the Cauldon Canal.
« on: 11:16:11, 15/05/18 »
 :)When I crossed the narrow little bridge over the lock onto the tow-path it was one of those grey days you get in an English spring that are colder than you think and perfect for walking.

On one side of the canal sprawled the campus of Stoke-on-Trent College, transformed from the concrete blocks I knew as a student there into something altogether more modern, all tinted glass and curving lines. Over on the other terraced streets ran down to the water, their gardens, no doubt, a nice place to sit on a warmer day.

The oath I was going to walk goes from Shelton where I was starting out to Bucknall, the canal, of course, goes much further. An iron mile marker informed me that Uttoxeter was just twenty- three miles away, a bit far for the mornings walking I had planned.

The path, along the section I walked anyway, is flat, mostly paved and apart from the litter that seems to be everywhere these days well maintained. There are at least three blow bridges, one of which has cobble stones underneath it that may be slippery if wet or icy.

The first stages of the walk are, despite the buildings on either side, are pleasingly rural. There is plenty of bird life to look at, if you like that sort of thing. Mostly moorhens and mallards bustling about like so many self -important commuters.

As I entered Hanley Park this impression only grew stronger with views on either side of the rolling, if indifferently mown lawns and the shell of the Victorian pavilion shrouded in scaffolding and in the process of being restored.

Get there early enough and you’ll be in time to see the narrow boats that tie up there for the night getting under way. I’ve always thought they look like a pleasant way to travel, if you don’t mind Spartan living conditions and a chemical toilet, a better pipe dream than a downsizing plan perhaps.

Once through the park the character of the canal changed again, coming back to something more like its industrial origins. Suddenly the path was overshadowed on one side by lowering tower blocks and on the other by the wall of a factory.

The wall was covered with graffiti, not the sort that trendy types with hipster beards daub in fashionable watering holes to make them look ‘edgy’. This was the artwork of urban alienation, all jagged lines and swear words. From beyond the wall came the repetitive beeping of a forklift shifting stock around.

Then, around another bend I found myself amongst the clean white blocks of a development of waterside apartments built on the site of what would have been when I was first taken in this walk by my parents a sizeable pottery works. Two preserved bottle kilns stand just off the path as a sort of memorial to the site’s vanished former use.

Walkers, this walker anyway, have a touch of the nosy parker about them, expressed through looking into the gardens of the houses they pass and speculating about the lives lived there.

A barbecue here waiting, hopefully for the sun, a scatter of brightly coloured children’s toys there and outside one apartment block, a wooden heron with its head poked through the railings looking forlornly upstream; wishing maybe it could be bustling about with all those busy moorhens and mallards I saw earlier.

The, around another bend we were back in if not the country then certainly that bit of suburbia that does its best to look like it. On the other side of the canal a man was busy mowing the outfield of a small cricket pitch, no play today as it looked like rain, but maybe tomorrow.

The canal itself wound on towards Uttoxeter and who knows where else after that, I’d gone far enough though, having been shown, as any good city walk should, that there is no shortage of surprising things to be seen even in the most familiar places.





« Last Edit: 11:27:42, 15/05/18 by AWC71 »

 

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