Heading South

After heading north a short way towards Leicester, we turned round and are now heading south on the Leicester branch of the Grand Union Canal. On Saturday our friend Steve joined us as we made our way from Wistow to Foxton:

Here you can see Helen on the left and Steve on the right opening the paddles at Kibworth Second Lock to allow Leo to go up. It was good to have an extra crew member helping up these five wide locks .

A close up of Steve doing his stuff.

Not only was Steve a useful addition to our crew, he even brought scones, strawberry jam and clotted cream - hence the beaming smiles onboard Leo!

Once we'd had our fill of scones we walked to Foxton village and the famous Foxton locks, up the old inclined plane and back down the 10 locks. Here is a picture of the arm which once led to the bottom of the inclined plane. For only just over 10 years from 1899 this inclined plane was used as an alternative to the locks to move narrowboats up or down the hill in caissons on rails with one going up and one going down.

Here is a view from the top of the inclined plane looking down to the arm in the previous picture. The lines of concrete show where the rails were fixed. Going up or down the inclined plane was much quicker than using the locks alongside.

On Monday we were once more with just the two of us. This view of reflections from the porthole on Leo can be viewed either way up - try it!

It was only a mile or so along the canal to the bottom of the Foxton Locks where this photo was taken while waiting for our turn to go up.

Here we are in the second lock from the bottom. The 10 locks at Foxton are arranged in two staircases of 5 locks each with a short pound in the middle where boats can pass. As you can see these are narrow locks.

This photo is looking back down the flight from near the top. The brick building just visible to the right was the engine house for the inclined plane. The 10 locks take the canal up 75 feet to the summit level of the Leicester branch.

Above the locks is this fine brass of a boy looking after the horse pulling a boat. Fortunately Leo has an engine.

Here we are in the sunshine moored a mile or so beyond the locks. Notice that we are flying the Yorkshire Rose this year. Not sure we'd dare if we were on the Lancaster Canal.

Yesterday (Tuesday) we came through Husbands Bosworth Tunnel shown here. This is about 1,100 yards long and was fairly dry.

We turned off the main canal to stay last night at the end of the short Welford arm. We have already turned around in this photo. The turning point is just beyond and to the left of the boats you can see.

We were visited by this swan family of Dad with six cygnets. We never saw Mum so we wonder whether she has died. From what we saw Dad was doing an excellent job training the youngsters to pester boaters for scraps.

We found these cottages in Welford with fine ornamental brickwork.

The Welford Arm has one small lock with a fall (or rise) of only 3 feet 6 inches. Here Leo is waiting for the lock to fill when we left this morning (Wednesday). One key feature of the Welford Arm is that it supplies the summit level of the canal with water from three reservoirs. So the journey back, going with the flow of water, is faster than on the way in.

We passed these strange hummocks of grass on the Welford Arm.

We are moored tonight out in the wilds near Yelvertoft. One reason for choosing a remote mooring is that our horn had stopped working and we wanted somewhere to work on it where no one would object to random hooting as I tested it. I am pleased to say that I found a faulty connection and all now seems to be well (fingers crossed). We later went for a walk over the fields to Winwick and the picture shows Winwick Manor which was built in the 16th century.

We found a pair of lions on the gateposts at the Manor, with our boat called Leo we like spotting lions on our travels.

On the way back to the boat we found this stone building which covers a well which still has water in it, despite being at the top of a hill. It looks very old.

So we are now out of Leicestershire and in Northamptonshire. The next couple of days will take us to Braunston, the centre of the English canal system from where our route lies south on the Oxford Canal.