Newly published and free, “Walk Stoke: Stoke Station to Tunstall” (135Mb PDF).

A free 112-page PDF photo-guide, taking you step-by-step along a 4.8 mile walk north through the city of Stoke-on-Trent. Photographed and documented at the end of June 2023. Mainly intended for walkers, but could also be done by cyclists.

The route connects with: my 2012 Ridgeway path (Kidsgrove Station – Stoke town); the 2012 Two Universities Way (Staffs Uni – Keele); the more recent Two Saint’s Way (Lichfield – Chester); and (with a bit of a wiggle) it can also connect from its end-point across to the Burslem Greenway or the Tunstall Greenway north (Tunstall centre – Kidsgrove).

Update: Now I know why Westport Lake / Tunstall was so relatively litter-free on the walk. A lady called Tracey Banks does it all regularly. Thanks, Tracey.

Some of the new items on Archive.org, of likely interest to those in Stoke and Staffordshire.

Erdeswicke’s A Survey of Staffordshire (1717) and his A Survey of Staffordshire (1723).

The History and Antiquities of Staffordshire, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 (1798).

Robert Plot’s The Natural History of Stafford-shire (1686) as a .ZIP file with a scan and also a hand-keyed clean text copy.

English Earthenware Figures, 1740-1840.

Royal Doulton figures : produced at Burslem Staffordshire.

A Pottery Panorama: Dudson Bicentenery.

Josiah Wedgwood: The Arts And Sciences United (Science Museum, 1978 exhibition catalogue).

The Story of Wedgwood (1975).

Burleigh Ware manufactured by Burgess & Leigh (catalogue).

The Early Charters of the West Midlands.

Defended England 1940: The South-West, Midlands and North (non-coastal ground defence structures).

Writer By Trade: a View of Arnold Bennett.

Writers and their Work, No. 9: Arnold Bennett.

The Poetry and Aesthetics of Erasmus Darwin.

Erasmus Darwin: philosopher, scientist, physician and poet.

Four Counties Ring : Trent & Mersey Canal and Caldon Canal and Weaver navigation.

Footpath Walks in and around the Peak District National Park.

Circular Walks along the Sandstone Trail (Cheshire, trail runs just west of Nantwich).

Short Circular Walks around the towns and villages of the Peak District.

Long Circular Walks in the Peak District (Merrill).

O.S. Pathfinder Guide: Peak District. White Peak walks.

Classic Caves of the Peak District (pot-holing).

The Moorlands of England and Wales: an environmental history, 8000 BC to AD 2000.

Paintings by David Inshaw. Who knew he was a Staffordshire lad? Apparently this Ruralist painter was from Wednesbury in the Black Country, a place not usually associated with bucolic rural scenery.

The Potteries Post has updated.

What to do about three key empty listed-buildings in Burslem? The Indoor Market, the Queens Theatre, and the Wedgwood Institute. There’s now a consultant’s Burslem Feasibility Final Report on the options.

* Indoor Market – “leisure based multi-functional”. £5+ million.

* Queens Theatre – “theatre”. £12 million.

* Wedgwood Institute – “educational, training and skills, office space”. £9+ million.

None of this will surprise anyone, though note that at the back of the report is a proposal for apartments in Princes Hall, the part of the Queens Theatre with rooms…

“The Princes Hall area offers a very different proposal, featuring one and two bed apartments which feature a living area, bathroom and bedroom. A key reason why the Princes Hall can effectively be used for such a purpose is due to its existing corridors which lead off into rooms; the plan depth of the spaces also allows these spaces to be easily converted into areas sufficient for residential use.”

Also a couple of interesting images of the Indoor Market Hall. Some of the existing fabric, and how it might look if repaired…

On transport, the consultant appears to overlook cycling on the canal towpath (access to the city’s biggest employer Bet365, the Etruria Valley mega-sheds, and the mainline train station), and the local train station at Longport. Though admittedly neither offer pleasant access up the hill to the centre of Burslem, unless you know the back-ways which avoid the main road.

Thinking of going for a Sunday walk or to a Sunday job in North Staffordshire? Think again. Just announced, an abrupt and major removal of vital local Sunday bus services by First (the biggest bus provider in the area). Likely to be a very significant blow to ramblers, church-goers, volunteers, Sunday-lunchers, and weekend workers, among others. The new timetables will operate from Sunday 2nd July 2023.

Service 7, 7A from Hanley – Kidsgrove / Biddulph: The Sunday service is withdrawn.

Service 18 from Hanley – Leek: The Sunday service is withdrawn.

Service 101 from Hanley – Stafford: The Sunday service is withdrawn.

And the 101 is supposed to be the area’s flagship / showcase ‘untouchable’ service. It was servicing (among others) the gigantic but remote new Pets At Home warehouse between Stone and Stafford. They must be livid at the likely loss of many of their weekend workers, having spent vast amounts on the new mega-site and being all set to move their Stoke workers there.

Do I get a magic performing monkey or something?

The Potteries Post has updated. More ‘news you can use’ in the arts, wildlife and heritage.

Strangeness from Stoke: 86 year-old Joseph Jones builds Milan Cathedral in matchsticks, in his front room, having already done the same for Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s. The wire-photo caption, in Italian, appears to say that he then used them as garden features after completion. Presumably after giving them a good coat of varnish. (Christmas 1965, Italian press photo).

I’m pleased to see that some bits of Etruria and Cliffe Vale have been newly photographed for Google StreetView, at the end of May 2023.

The first re-photographing in a long time, as you can see above. And looking fabulous with it — or as fabulous as the greener bits of inner-city Stoke-on-Trent can look at the end of May. Coverage is a bit patchy at present, but hopefully it’s the start of a new tranche of photography. I’d do it myself, along with litter-picking, but I can’t afford the £500 for an Insta360 X3 camera with GPS (apparently the best and easiest, I hear).

Now, there’s an idea. Every city, each May-June, trusted photographers should be able to borrow an X3 camera for free and go out and build Street View for their city. Cheap, easy, ‘citizen PR’. Although, of course, ideally done after a Dad’s Army of paid-unemployed litter-pickers has swept through the area.

Stokies reading this should note that uploading 360-degree .MP4 or .MOV video (Google prefers 360-video) to help build Google Street View has changed. The long-time Android creation/uploading app has gone, and it seems you now do it through the Street View Studio website. Although it seems you can also do it direct from an X3 camera, which I’m told recently had a firmware update to enable more fine-grained GPS metadata. Older buyers should beware that the user needs to also own a smartphone (ugh!), to ‘activate’ the X3 camera for the first time via an ‘app’ — this may be a deal-breaker.

The only thing I see from the BBC these days is the 10-day weather, on a desktop PC. And even that’s becoming alarmist and naggy and click-baity, if it’s not filtered and blocked. Here’s how to clear all that guff off, in one go, and just leave yourself with what you came for… the likely weather plus sunset/sunrise times.

Just copy-paste my personal list of blocks into your Web browser’s uBlock Origin filter list (Icon | Dashboard (cog-wheel icon) | ‘My Filters’)…

! Hide all the alarmist, political, nagging and video stuff on the 10-day BBC Weather forecast
www.bbc.co.uk##:xpath(//span[contains(@class,"wr-c-environmental-data__item wr-c-environmental-data__item--pollution")])
www.bbc.co.uk##:xpath(//span[contains(@class,"wr-c-environmental-data__item wr-c-environmental-data__item--pollen")])
www.bbc.co.uk##:xpath(//span[contains(@class,"wr-c-environmental-data__item wr-c-environmental-data__item--uv")])

www.bbc.co.uk##[class*="wr-time-slot-primary__precipitation wr-time-slot-primary__precipitation--grey gel-brevier"]
www.bbc.co.uk##[class*="wr-time-slot-primary__precipitation wr-time-slot-primary__precipitation--blue gel-brevier"]

The result, clean and simple…

You’re welcome.

What I can’t do anything about is this subtly depressive slight-of-hand. The worst possible weather for the day is always chosen to represent it on the main single-icon. The single-icon is thus usually deeply unrepresentative of the day’s likely weather…

A lovely day, effectively and falsely proclaimed to be “wet all day” by the main icon and description, just because of a few drops of rain at 4pm.

And here’s another example of how the BBC lies with its 10-day forecast. A beautiful Sunday, but the slight chance of a drop of rain at 4pm means the whole day is falsely labelled “Light rain”.

This is not just misleading, it’s damaging the UK, with visitor attractions and some retail seeing up to a 30% drop in people if “rain” is apparently forecast.

My The Potteries Post has updated. ‘News you can use’, from Stoke-on-Trent and thereabouts.

Fascinating Folk of Newcastle-under-Lyme Film Show: Philip Astley and the performing arts, 15th June at the Brampton Museum in N-u-L. Followed by more in the same series, including public talks on Potters at Play and Oliver Lodge. Booking now.

The town also has a new circus centre planned on the back of the Philip Astley connection, and have commissioned a photographer to make portraits of local performing families.