5 June 2010 - Town of Stone

British way of fishing using electronics. What's the point?

Mute Swan (yes, they can speak)

Maggotts - used as bait for fishing



Canal lock for negotiating canals with changing water levels



Narrow Boats



Bread made in a flower pot!

Green Eggs from a Mallard Duck

Smoked Kippers - Yum

Markets at Stone

Market Fare

Today we had a little trip to the town of Stone, not far from here. They have a lovely country market with all manner of stuff for sale including lots of foodstuffs you don't see in Aus. There was a guy there selling fish and he had a Kipper smoker going at his stall.

We bought quite a bit of food including pork pie, apple pie, various biscuits, pigs tongue, ox tongue and black pudding etc. The tropical type fruit for sale was from Chile, Spain, Portugal etc. Didn't see anything from Australia. Lyn bought an Avocado which was big by Australian standards as our hosts had never tried it but when she cut it up it was bad inside. I think it came from Portugal.

We had a lovely salad for tea.

After the markets we walked down by the Trent & Mersey Canal. The Brits are certainly mad about their Narrow Boats. There are hundreds of them buzzing about on the canals. You just can't be in a hurry as the locks appear at regular intervals and must be negotiated. It's usually an elderly couple wiling away their retirement in the peace and tranquility. Nothing like that in Australia where everyone is madly driving everywhere getting stressed out.

The fishing in the lakes is also interesting. The fishermen all have multiple rods connected to sophisticated electronic devices which beep when they get a bite which didn't seem to happen at all. They just sit in their little tents waiting for the alarm to go off and I imagine (since we never saw it happen) would run out and grab the rod and haul the fish in. They seem to mostly use maggots for fishing and feed some of them dye to make them a different colour. We have also seen lots of bleached swans here!

The weather over the past 2 days has been superb and you guessed it, it rained overnight just to keep the gardens moist. Perfect really.

As Joyce said in an email, Samantha left her "A" game in the dressing room at the French Open.
Never mind. The Italian was very happy.

We leave for Nottingham today. The place of my birth.