Back up Foxton

Saturday 9 June

It was a promising start to the day – we got up early and the sun was shining. After a quick trip to the local newsagent we set off to go back to Foxton at ten past eight, arriving at Foxton at a quarter to ten. I was full of the joys of summer as we moored on the same visitor moorings we’d used before. So much so that I wasn’t even too twitched when I dropped the piling hook we use at the back to set up the spring, and it bounced once on the grass and shot into the cut.

To deal with these episodes we have a thing called the Sea Searcher. It’s an immensely powerful magnet which I’ve fixed on a length of main halyard line. A few trawls near the point of entry and up came the hook.

Just as we were finishing mooring, Dave and Anna from Mehalahland, which was tied in front of us, came back for a chat. In fact we were chatting off and on, about the sad history of some boat builders mainly, almost to lunchtime.

I nipped along to the little shop at the foot of the locks to buy bread, and found the latest issue of Waterways World there as well. There’s a two page spread about Braidbar winning best in show at Crick in there, with a couple of nice shots of the Brycelands.

After lunch we took some recycling round to the sanitary station, then retired to the boat – it was almost too hot to do anything very much, but Sheila managed some brass polishing while I did the blog, and I then addressed a minor problem of slow leaks in two of the roof prisms by taking out their fixing screws one at a time and resealing them with SikaFlex.

I cooked some new potatoes and boiled some eggs ready for a salad, and we went round to the Bridge 61 pub at the foot of the locks for a couple of restorative pints before returning to the boat and making and eating the salad.

The Bridge 61 now offers a striking alternative to the chain pub quality of the Foxton Locks Inn, where we had a meal the other night. There used to be just the one pub on this site, the Bridge 61, run by Tony Matts of the boatyard and located where the Foxton Locks Inn is now. It was a place of great character but limited scope. The beer was great, and good but basic pub food could be had.

British Waterways felt that Tony wasn’t fully exploiting the opportunities of a tourist honeypot, so when his lease ended, they threw him out to his present split site, half of it at the foot of the locks and the other half along the Harborough Arm. Then they opened the Foxton Locks Inn as part of the BW partnership with Scottish and Newcastle. Tony has now opened the new Bridge 61, at the foot of the locks. It’s even more basic than before, but has much more personality than the new shiny food pub across the way.


Sunday 10 June

Waking to a cloudy and misty day, we boated through the junction to the foot of the locks at eight o’clock. I went and found the keeper, who was right at the top, of course, and he said we could start up when the Canaltime which was working down had cleared the flight. It took them a while to do that, so it was about half eight before we started up. We made good time after that, and were on the water point at the top by 9.45. I walked back down the flight to get bread and a pre-ordered paper. We were boating again by 10.15

We didn’t go far today, just to some towpath moorings at Bridge 56. There’s nothing much there, but a nice view across the Leicestershire countryside, and it’s very peaceful after the hurly burly of Foxton. The main phone, on a Vodafone contract, had no signal at all, but our Orange PAYG beast, that we keep mainly for backup internet access, had a decent connection, so we texted the kids to let them know we were on a different number for the night. It being Sunday we were half expecting calls, especially as Cathy is now almost overdue to produce.

After lunch I decided that a trial run of the new AC powered pump out pump would be a good idea, not to say fun, so we rigged it up to pump canal water into the canal. Unfortunately we were doomed to disappointment. It’s a 550 watt pump, so is well within the capabilities of the 3.5 kWatt TravelPower, but its start up current is just too great for the system to accept, and the Victron inverter/charger that oversees the whole system just kept going into overload. Looks like we’ll have to wait until we are back at Braidbar in the late Autumn to see if there’s a way round the problem.

Fortunately, as we’ll be on the Fens for most of the next few months, where pump outs are free, this isn’t too much of a problem.

To cheer ourselves up with some small achievements, we gave the inside of the boat a good clean, and I swept the roof which was covered in bits of tree from last night. We then had a quiet afternoon, reading and stuff, and had a beef curry from the freezer, to which I added a brown rice pullao.

Both Graeme and Elanor duly rang in the course of the evening. No sign of action from Cathy yet, despite various measures by Graeme like cooking her a strong chilli con carne, and making her eat huge amounts of pineapple. Reassured him that these things normally happen when they are ready to, but I do understand their frustration.