A long flat windy bit (also windy!)

 The section of canal we did today was about 18 miles and had no locks on the main route - we did take a diversion of which more later. But it is a very windy section, following the same contour for the 18 miles.  The first part of the journey took us past Crick Marina which is absolutely enormous with three different entries onto the canal.  On the May bank holiday weekend it hosts a boat show which has loads of visitors, many boats, both for the display and visitors boats and is a very extensive affair.  We went once long before we bought a boat.  How they fit in so many additional boat visitors is not at all clear.

We've been under 40 bridges today.  Lots of them look like this and are generally on bends one side or the other, or sometimes both.  Sods law is fully operational on canals and ensures that when you come to a bridge there will be a boat to pass going in the other direction.  This happened several times, and in places where the canal was narrow too.  

There were very few bridges like this one - the area is very rural and really seems to have been left alone certainly since the canal was put into it. 

This is the bridge that carries the A14 across the canal and the valley too.  It's about 2 or so miles from the M1 Junction to the left.  You can see one of the original brick bridges in the background.

And also a field of yellow! Definitely really yellow. The smell of oilseed rape was really strong. 

We stopped for lunch after about 3 1/2 hours of motoring and having travelled about 7 1/2 miles! Progress is not fast when it's as windy as this section was.  When we stopped we were very close to the junction for the Welford Arm - about a mile and a half of canal that goes up to a feeder reservoir.  We had been hoping to get to Foxton locks in time to go down them which meant the last boat had to be there before 5.00pm and our best hope was to make it for 4.30 or so.  We decided to have a bit of diversion and a less pressured journey and so explored the Welford Arm.  It too is slightly windy, and has a lock before you get to the winding hole where you can turn round. So we did the same lock twice today, once in each direction.

This was the view of the boat in the lock - I hadn't realised how splendid the sky was when I took the photo.  It was not a very deep lock but it took us up to the highest point on the Grand Union Canal. 

I thought this row of trees were very pretty especially with the sun behind them.  We had just a couple of hundred yards to go to the turning space and then came back the same way. So this time when we got back to the junction we turned north, and in a fairly short distance arrived at the Husbands Bosworth Tunnel - quite a short one of 1198 yards.  You can see through to the other end of a tunnel that length which makes driving the boat through it rather easier. We'd got almost three quarters of the way through before we met a boat coming the other way.  It doesn't fill you with complete confidence in the driver when you notice he is brandishing a beer bottle in the hand he's not holding the tiller with!!  They missed us but certainly hit the wall on various occasions and on both sides as they drew away from us! 

As we approached the tunnel we went through a stretch with quite a deep cutting and some big trees, some of which, like the one to the left had fallen and had to be cut up in order to make it possible for boats to come through the canal. 

The route took us past the bottom of Laughton Hill which was quite a significant lump with some very big trees on the top.  In some places there were large clumps of gorse coming down from the summit.  It looked as though they were flows of lava.  On the right side of the canal the ground was much lower - it's the plain we'll get down to from Foxton Locks and there were lots of sheep there with very young lambs, much smaller than the ones we saw yesterday and with a much higher pitched bleat.  

At about 6.15pm we found a mooring near the top of the lock flight - less than half a mile to go. It is just as well we stopped there as there is a floating market of 15 boats which have businesses afloat - arty crafty ones, foody ones (though the Three Cheese Boat has run out of cheese as the market has been so successful) and some that are boat related - a fender maker for example. It opens at 10.00am tomorrow so just might have to be visited!  After we moored I went for a walk to the top lock and walked past the craft boats, and also this rather fine statue of a boy and a towing horse. 

Foxton Locks is made up of 5 linked locks ( a bit like the ones at Watford yesterday) a pound where you can potentially pass a boat coming up, and then another run of 5 locks.  Off to the right there used to be an inclined plane which is a sloping piece of ground with railway tracks going up and down it which used to carry boats in caissons (troughs of water). The one going down balanced the one coming up.  It was a solution to a steep hill that was tried in one or two other places as well, but in the end it couldn't be made commercially and technically successful, so since the early 1900s it's just been locks.  There's a sign at the top that says that 4000 boats a year pass through this flight.  

So tomorrow we have to check in with the lock keeper and then will go down this flight to the flatter space below, but to a selection of other locks too - about 22 spread out along the route - after the 10 at Foxton!!