A flurry of historic boats at Stoke-on-Trent

It suddenly got very busy outside our boat this morning. At least five historic boats appeared, having come through Harecastle Tunnel in convoy, and started queueing for the locks. First was Nutfield (without Raymond), followed by Sudbury and Stanton.

Here is Sudbury, whose owners have had the boat only since Christmas.

Here is Stanton, with Sudbury in front and Nutfield just visible in front of Sudbury.

Then came Nuneaton and Brighton, newly painted but with no signwriting as yet.

I couldn't help them down the locks as we had to go to the post office to see if our postal votes had arrived. At 1145 they hadn't, so we walked on into Newcastle-under-Lyme town centre to have a look round. We had coffee/hot chocolate at the Wetherspoon's.

Back at the post office they still hadn't had their delivery so we returned to the boat for lunch. At 1450 Jan phoned the post office ... and they had an envelope for us! Exciting! We hot-footed it back and claimed our post, which Ally and Ben had sent us. Among other things it contained our voting packs and our new two-together railcard. We marked our crosses and posted the ballots back to the council.

At last! They should be delivered in time to be counted. If the vote is as close as some predict I want to be the one with the casting vote, as it were! (Actually, do I really want that responsibility? No, I know it's not really like that!)

We did some shopping at the big Tesco and had a barbecue. Later we invited Robert and Wendy from Gerty, moored next to us, for drinks. They had been to the New Vic theatre to see a play about Martin Luther King. That's two more boaty friends made. It turned out that Wendy had made the small knitted owl that we bought at Crick for Josiah; Wendy helped Jan with some knittery and promised her some wool when we go round for coffee in the morning ...

Oh - forgot to say - we moved onto the Caldon Canal to use the facilities and find a better mooring, which is how we ended up next to Gerty.