Monday 2 March 2009

Foxton

Ok, not from Fradley - although that will be a journey we do one day I hope.

No, this view
was arrived at by this form of transport
I took the opportunity to take the first ride out on my new bike to Foxton, as I have not been there for many years.

There were no boats on the flight - mainly due to this I suspect.....

I'm not sure of the 'opening' time of the flight - I should check BW's web site

The whole place looked a lot more finished than before (15 or so since I was last at Foxton). I recall the bottom of the flight being very 'messy' I still would like to see the flight in action on a summers day - it must be organised chaos?

The bike was excellent and I'm looking forward to getting many miles on it - just need to put in some canal locations.......

Nev

4 comments:

Halfie said...

"There were no boats on the flight - mainly due to this I suspect....."

Er ... mainly due to what?

Glad the bike works well. We did Foxton a couple of weeks ago - it's a lovely flight. It opens this time of year at 0800, but Waterscape.com is unclear as to the time of last entry. We played safe and arrived in the morning both times. Here's my post on our descent: http://jhalfie.blogspot.com/2009/02/husbands-bosworth-to-market-harborough.html

Halfie said...

Ah. Just spotted the chain.

Nev Wells said...

Halfie,

Just caught up with your post and enjoyed reading it - so I presume its one up and one down using the middle pound as the passing place?

I was there about 3pm and the padlock was on. There was a guy bringing in the furniture from the top cafe who looked quite unfriendly - not sure if he doubled up as the lock keeper?

Nev

Halfie said...

Nev, you're half right. The middle pound is indeed used as a passing place, but more than one boat can go up/down at the same time by following on one lock behind the leader. There's obviously a limit to the number of boats the middle pound can hold while waiting for the next staircase to become empty: I expect the lockie allows no more than three boats in either of the staircases at one time. Of course, if all the boats are going in one direction, and there are no boats waiting at the other end to go the other way, then all can follow on straight away. That's probably as clear as clay puddle.

The lockie is friendly enough, but he did stop me cycling by the locks (I'd cycled there from a path which came to the flight half-way along, and so I'd missed the "no cycling" sign). There was a friendly woman in the cafe when I was there.