Onto fresh waters

Market Harborough is a lovely town. We said to each other, "We could live here". We also said the same thing later on, about Alrewas and Chester. Returning along the Market Harborough arm on Tuesday 31st March 2009 some of the gardens looked like parkland - and the houses are huge!


There are good views to the north from the Market Harborough arm.


At Foxton we tied up next to Vingt Deux and had a look at the site of the inclined plane. People from BTCV (British Trust for Conservation Volunteers as was) were scraping the moss of some concrete remains.


After buying some second hand books in aid of the Foxton Inclined Plane Trust we boarded Shadow once more, and turned onto waters we hadn't cruised before: the Leicester Section going north from Foxton Junction. Almost immediately things were different. Even the ducks were not the usual ones. What are these orange-beaked creatures?




This part of the cruise is where my bicycle came into its own. We shared locks with a competent Canaltime couple, and I lockwheeled to make things quicker. Nearly every lock was against us, so I would cycle ahead to start filling a lock; then return to open the gates to let the boats out; then shut the gates; then cycle on to open the gates on the next lock and start locking the boats down... For several locks-worth of canal I must have cycled three times the distance the boats travelled.


Both the Canaltime boat and we tied up for the night at Kilby Bridge. This is the BW yard opposite our mooring.