Up Foxton........eventually......and on to the summit.

We left our mooring late on Thursday morning and after a brief stop at the service point, we started the climb up towards Kibworth Top Lock. The weather was again glorious and it was good to see the towpath had been mowed as so many seem to have been left to get out of hand. A couple of the pounds between locks were a bit low and there was again a distinct lack of traffic travelling towards us. At Taylor's Turnover Lock we caught up a couple of single handers and  helped them through. For one of them it was his first single handed trip and they travelled together from Thorne. Chatting away at the next few locks, he had just given up work and now hadn't got a care in the world, although he was still up and about at 5.30am every morning. 

Saddington Tunnel

They moored up just after Kibworth Top Lock and we carried on through Saddington Tunnel and found a really lovely mooring near to Debdale Marina - just room for one in a cut out in the reeds - marvellous. A good evening of maggot drowning produced this lovely Tench, probably my favourite fish to catch. I've spent many hours fishing for them on lakes in Ireland and to catch one in the canal was great. 

Mooring at Debdale

Prize catch

Over the last few days we've barely seen any boats. We had an early morning walk down to Foxton on Friday and it was all quiet. One boat passed us before we decided to set off for the flight so we were a little shocked to find that at 11.10am we were 8th in the queue to go up !! The basin at the bottom of the locks was chocka with boats and there were another four descending. There are worse places to get held up though, and we decided to observe the fun from the beer terrace of the Bridge 61 pub with a pint and a baguette. It seems that the other boats had all come out from Market Harborough and every boat that came down headed that way too.

Lunch at Bridge 61

Jasper enjoying the scenery too

We finally got in the flight at about 1.30pm and enjoyed the views as we climbed. This place never disappoints for us and you can only marvel at the engineering and vision of those responsible. We couldn't resist an ice cream at the top and then we headed off towards Husbands Bosworth and Welford, enjoying the views over towards Theddingworth.