Sunday 29^th July

* Bronze canal horse at the top of Foxton Locks

Once again a lovely sunny morning with the mist curling off the water as the sun burnt it away. We made another early start and were at the top of Foxton locks just after 9am having not past another moving boat all the way. However we were 4^th in the queue to go down the locks with two boats already on their way up.

* Foxton Locks

As we had some time to wait June chatted to the other boaters in the queue and I went and fetched us Bacon and Sausage Baps from the Café at the top lock. They were delicious and we are looking forward to one on the way back.

* Bacon and Sausage Baps from the cafe

After just over an hour the group started to descend the first set of 5 Staircase locks and June was assisted by a very friendly volunteer lockie. At the bottom of this set a boat was waiting in the middle pound to come up, so we past it slowly and entered the next set of locks which lead down to the junction with the Market Harborough Arm.

* June working the locks with the help of a very nice volunteer lady lockie.

Under one of the lock bridges I encountered an enormous spider guarding his latest victim and had to avoid his equally large web.

* Foxton Spider

We turned down the arm and immediately encountered a swing bridge which was not marked in our Nicholson Guide. June had come aboard at the bottom of the locks so she now had to get off again to open the bridge. She had just shut it when along came another boat so we carried on to the next swing bridge and having opened it along came 4 more boats out of now where which we let through with our best good grace as we were now concerned we might not be able to find a mooring space at Mkt. Harborough.

The weather took a turn for the worse and we had a couple of heavy showers on the way down the arm but the sun kept coming out to quickly dry everything off.

No need to have worried about mooring however as two of the boats turned around at the first winding hole and there were several spaces on the entrance to the basin. The other 2 boats went into the basin to turn and so we moored up immediately outside the entrance in a nice sunny spot, they then moored up behind us.

* Entrance to the basin

* Inside the basin

* Our Mooring spot

I took Phoenix for a walk around the basin and found The Waterfront Restaurant and as they were serving food until 6.45pm and would take Guide Dog Puppies decided we would have a late Sunday lunch/early evening meal at 5.00 pm. We had been recommended to the restaurant by some boaters at the top of Foxton locks and we must say the meal and service were excellent and at £14 for two courses excellent value.

Earlier in the day Carolanne had texted us to say that they were stuck in a pound on the Aston flight into Birmingham, the C&RT boys were trying to get water down to them but they had no idea of how long they would have to wait before they could get on their way again. I phoned them when we returned to the boat to check on progress and they had reached Birmingham after being delayed just over 2 hours. We had encountered low pound levels when we used that route in March but were surprised that the same problem existed now after all the rain we have had.