Market Harborough, 0 miles, 0 locks
Had a visit from Dave and Pam who said that the River Soar is in an uproar, which puts paid to my plans to continue north. The interweb deigned to work again, so after a quick chat with Debbie about staying another day (and bunging her some more cash) I started exploring my options (makes me sound like a jobseeker from The League of Gentlement). Using the absolutely wonderful Canalplan AC, I calculated journey times from here to Fradley Junction, both going 'over the top' (i.e. via Leicester) and 'round the bottom' (back the way I've come, then up the Oxford and Coventry canals past Rugby, Nuneaton and Tamworth). Turns out that there's about 10 miles in it, or a couple of hours time difference. On the one hand that's good: heading south isn't costing me any time, since that's the quicker route; on the other, it leaves me retracing my steps, which I didn't really want to do.
Adding spice to the equation is my need to be in London on Friday, both to have my eyes examined to see if I have Glaucoma and also to have a 'tour' of King's Place—the building that has gone up in Ice Wharf Marina that has cheekily (in my opinion) applied to extend their licence from 11pm until midnight, even though they haven't opened yet! My choices are to stay here in Market Harborough all week and catch the train on Friday (1hr15, straight into St Pancras) or head off tomorrow and spend three days in the rain to get to Rugby by Thursday night (and I think you all know my opinion of Rugby!) That would be bearable if only I hadn't been offered some work in London on Tuesday and Wednesday of next week, so I need to be able to get there and back easily (where, ironically, Rugby has the advantage of a 1hr service to London). If I set off tomorrow, getting to London on Friday would be okay from Rugby, but you kind of run out of decent stations until you get to Tamworth (roughly three days travel) which would mean an 07:08 train in order to get into London in time and without a change. After scratching my head, pacing and making a lot of tea, the compromise 'best fit' (that is to say, least dreadful) is to stay put and do Friday's travelling from here, then be in the rain Saturday/Sunday/Monday and do next weeks travelling from Rugby. Notice that I'm assuming rain, even though I've not seen the forecast for the weekend.
The longer term consideration is that I must be back in King's Cross by November 3rd when the canals are closed for maintenance, so I mustn't get so far away that I can't get back in time, which to me means that I need to start back at the beginning of October. I'd also quite like there to be an actual 'end point' to add a bit of closure to the journey, which means picking somewhere I can get to by the end of this month, that is also no more than a month away from London and that I'd like to go to! After interrogating Canalplan AC again, it's clear that it has to be Llangollen, but as an extra flourish, I could probably take in a quick trip down the River Weaver (assuming that it hasn't gone wayward) which would allow me to 'have a go' on the Anderton Boat Lift. There's a bit of leeway on the journey to Llangollen, so I'd have time for a few disasters without disrupting the schedule, and the journey back—if I go via the River Thames (er...)—would leave another week's 'contingency' before the 3rd November cut-off date. Sounds like a plan!
So:
- Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday in Market Harborough
- Friday in London from Market Harborough
- Saturday/Sunday/Monday travelling to Rugby
- Tuesday/Wednesday in London from Rugby
- Thursday until the end of the month: off to Llangollen via the Anderton lift
- October: Llangollen to King's Cross
Sorted!
Having got all that out of the way, I was at a loose end. I'm desperate to visit the National Space Centre in Leicester, having heard how wonderful it is on The Archers, but being Monday it was shut. I also wanted to visit the Foxton Inclined Plane museum at Foxton Locks and assumed that it would be shut too, but not so. A quick phone call revealed that they were open and that all I needed to do to get there was "Cross over the road by the traffic island, then catch the No. 44 to St Luke's Hospital, that runs at 42 minutes past the hour". What I'd forgotten is that in this part of the country, as in Birmingham, 'traffic island' means a roundabout, not one of those things with bollards in the middle of the road (that my cycling proficiency instructor informed me is actually called a 'street refuge'). Having crossed the road by the street refuge to wait at the bus stop, I was a bit suspicious when at about 45 minutes past, a single decker bus whizzed past the nearby roundabout. By 55 minutes past, I knew I'd missed it.
Not wishing to wait another hour for a bus, I decided that the thing to do was cycle. I had a quick look in Nicholson's and it all looked very easy—go to the roundabout, straight on until you get to Gallow Field Road, turn left, and keep going until you hit the canal. As I was inflating my tyres (must be the altitude), I noticed that the boat next to Oothoon was about to set off. It crossed my mind that I could probably just hitch a lift, since they were going my way, but it might be a bit cheeky and anyway I had my bike out now, so off I went. I had a bit of a panic when I unexpectedly went over the canal before reaching the turn-off, but a quick check on Google Maps on my phone showed that this was fine and the canal was taking the scenic route (i.e. going in the wrong direction), so I pressed on and was there before the next bus would even have set off.
The museum is housed in what used to be the engine room for the inclined plane (or "Thomas Lift"). What, you're asking, is an 'inclined plane'? Well it's a boat lift. If you imagine there are two bathtubs full of water, that are on wheels and with a couple of long bits of string connecting them together. One tub is at the top of a hill and the other is at the bottom, and the bits of string go over some pulleys at the top of the hill, with the bathtubs being kept apart by running on rails that go up the hill side-by-side. Put a boat in each bathtub (or not—Archimedes' Principle says that they still weight the same because of the water) and give one a shove down and the other will tappy-lappy up the hill and they'll effectively swap places, lifting one boat up the hill and lowering the other boat down. That, in layman's terms, is what the inclined plane was (the inclined bit being the hill and the plane probably referring to the bathtubs, which were propped up on one side to keep them level). The actual inclined plane was a marvel of engineering when it opened in 1900 and was the most sophisticated and most modern boat lift in the world—so much so that variants of it were built all over the place.
Of course it's never that simple and at Foxton the 'shoving' was done by a 30hp steam engine, which was expensive to keep up to steam when no boats were about, and the narrow locks at Watford restricted the number of narrowboats that could be travelling up or down the stretch of canal anyway. Various things were supposed to happen to alleviate this, such as the widening of the Watford locks and the building of a second lift at Watford to speed things up there, but none of them came to fruition, so in 1911—just 11 years after it had opened—the Foxton lift was closed down and in 1927 the metal was sold for scrap. There's a page with photos about it on the Foxton Inclined Plane Trust's web site here, and the Wikipedia article about Foxton locks is also worth a read. The museum itself is small, but has lots of good stuff about the lift, including bits of metal that the scrap man somehow missed, working models of the lift and it how the whole site of lifts and locks used to look. There's also some general information about canals and canal life, and for £2.50 admission is an absolute bargain.
After the museum I took advantage of the fair weather to take some pictures of the Foxton locks and I also popped into Bridge 61, by the bottom lock, for a nice cup of tea and a sit down with a slice of Cherry Genoa. While I was sat sitting, the boat that I'd considered bumming a lift off came through the swing bridge and stopped at the bottom lock. Just as well I'd cycled! Then it was a slow climb back to the top of the flight and along the towpath to find the road again, but not before getting stopped by some tourists who wanted to see the Brompton folded and unfolded.
Given that it was so easy to get to Foxton you'd think it would be impossible to go wrong getting back, but I managed it. I knew something was amiss when I was suddenly going down a very long hill, which I figured had to be a bad idea. Sure enough I was taking the long way back and there were a few hills before I got back to Market Harborough. When I arrived, I was in the middle of the town and needed to cycle up the hill to get back to the wharf, but I guess the whole point of this journey is to get me fit and healthy so I shouldn't grumble.
There was no-one around when I got back, so I had pasta and tussled with the Internet (which would connect then decide my credentials were wrong). To pass the time I watched Sunshine, which I've had for ages but never gotten around to watching and which was good. At about 11pm I popped my head outside for a look-see. It was still as still can be and it was quite eerie that the basin was now empty after being so full today, and so quiet too. Of course it's just an aberration: there'll be rain later for sure.
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