A lap of Leicester

The lively, likeable St Martin's area

We only spent a day and a half in Leicester but that was long enough to say we like it.
The compact city centre seems to have a bit of everything. Except traffic, which is of course a good thing. Even the ring road that keeps the cars away isn't too daunting for the pedestrian to deal with.

And the glamorous modern John Lewis led zone

Once inside (and it's only minutes from the mooring) we found a healthy mixture of old and new, of flashy stores and arcades and cosmopolitan independent bars, shops and restaurants in the picturesque St Martin's district near the cathedral-ette. Sorry but that little church really doesn't cut it with the likes of Winchester or Ely.
But never mind, the city has a youthful multicultural vibe, as it should with two large universities and a large Asian population. It has a terrific indoor market which reflects that cultural diversity too and elsewhere you'll find everything from an Eritrean restaurant to a Serbian Orthodox church. Oh and plenty of signs telling you that Richard III would have, could have or might have visited just about every old part of the city.

Frog Island; the graffiti is great, the rest is not

Anyway our time on the moorings was up so we headed out of town today to discover that Leicester, like so many of our old industrial towns, is still a city of two halves. Literally round the corner from the moorings comes the familiar picture of industrial decay. Frog Island – a genuine island between the river and the canal cut – is pretty squalid though the graffiti was imaginative – and the water beneath us had become a treacle of thick, gluey blackness oozing a stench of diesel and filth. A few ducks and a lonely heron braved its polluted waters (oddly, we saw a heron here on our last trip eight years ago: I wonder if this one was related?)
But things are happening: the demolition teams were at work on the landmark old Wolsey factory and only the tall chimney remained of the famous purveyor of Y-fronts.

The lonely chimney: a sign of the past

And the Space Centre: a sign of the future maybe

The surroundings did improve once the river re-entered at Belgrave Lock, where the futuristice Space Centre can be seen in the distance, and as we eased out of town the waterway followed a picturesque, wandering course between old, worked-out gravel pits that are now Watermead Country Park. Tomorrow Leicester will finally be behind us but I'm sure we will be back.
And in case you're wondering this is that cathedral:

The Richard III experience

Simple but striking tomb of history's favourite villain

Finding a few bones in a car park seems to have transformed Leicester's fortunes. Suddenly an unremarkable east midlands city has become the Richard III Experience.
There are banners everywhere and anything remotely old has a display panel linking it to the crook-back king, one of history's great villains, whose remains were discovered under an old car park here that had been built on the site of the church in which he'd been buried after his defeat and death at the Battle of Bosworth.

You can't escape the Richard III experience

It was a discovery that caught the imagination and has got the tourism tills jangling. After a bit of argy-bargy with some distant relatives, Richard of York was re-buried not in York but here in Leicester Cathedral. It's given a rather modest little cathedral (a parish church until its1929 promotion into the episcopal premier league) a whole new life: the simple but striking tomb is centrepiece of a completely re-worked interior.
Don't get me wrong; I don't blame Leicester for cashing in - it certainly got us exploring what turned out to be a very likeable city. A fuller look is demanded tomorrow.

More of a weak and feeble stream today

The run into Leicester finally brought us off the canal and onto the River Soar, a change marked by a large 'Strong Stream' warning board. Today's stream was a feeble weakling: the pound north of Aylestone so low we were scraping through the bottom.

Seadog Brian can't enthuse about a football stadium

The mighty Freeman lock weir by the football stadium – the subject of hair raising warnings in the guidebooks – was barely trickling and we could watch egrets and terns feeding there while gliding past.

More prosaically, on the way in we also passed a canalside Aldi with a handy mooring - our first supermarket shop stop since back in Market Harborough.
The river runs into central Leicester along its Mile Straight, past smart new university buildings and high rise office blocks. It's lined with mooring bollards – all of them empty because boaters are warned off staying there in 'bandit country'. Instead we moor in a securely locked compound by the pretty Castle Park and, like the foxes and badgers, venture out at night when the locked park is empty.
And finally...seen on St Mary's Mill Lock:

Something of a contrast in messages

Down from the hills

Those big locks were hard work today

We have left the gently rolling hills of lovely Leicestershire at last and dropped down thirteen locks into the flat river valley that is taking us through the busy suburbs and soon into the city of Leicester itself.
It's been lovely weather but, boy, the locks have been hard work. I've known heavier and I've known stiffer but these are still plain awkward.
They're quite slow to fill – the last inch or two takes forever and the darned things often just won't stay shut. Try to drive in or out through one gate and the other is guaranteed to drift open. Worse, often as not when you try to shut the bottom gates behind the departing boat one simply swings open again and you have to run round the lock and pull it shut. Whereupon the other one starts to drift open...
I could have buzzed forever round the gates of Bumblebee Lock. The gates of that one resolutely refused to stay shut. Which is probably why the pound above it was so low we were scraping through the mud to reach the lock.
The canal was still quiet – we met only one other boat in the morning; a Norwegian couple on a four week canal holiday. They've come every year for seven years and done different parts of the network. I've met so many overseas regulars on the canals. Sometimes I think we don't realise just how highly our system is regarded by others.

Though we did get a bit of help through this one

All changed after Kilby Bridge; boats started appearing and we paired up with Nb Aylestone for the last half dozen locks of the day. They'd been going for even longer than us and were even more glad of some help with the locks – a lockwheeler either side to stop those blasted gates swinging.
By now we were right on the southern edge of Leicester and not much of it looked suitable for overnight mooring. Especially not after Mrs B hooked a shopping trolley out of the cut. A large gaggle of kids drifted out of the bushes at the next lock where they'd been hanging about as kids do and vaguely helped us through in a haphazard, teenager-ish way.
We plodded on looking for somewhere away from trolleys and teenagers and suddenly found it as the canal swung through ninety degrees and entered the pretty water meadows of the River Soar and, at least for one night, we were back in the country.

Rescued from the cut and above to go in a rubbish hopper

Be prepared

Be prepared - even for canoes in the lock

I like to think we are prepared for most eventualities on Tug Harry but getting tangled up with a gang of Venture Scouts on the Leicester section locks was something new.
We met them at the first of the big, double locks that are now the trademark of the canal as it winds down from the final tunnel and heads into Leicester and the River Soar.
The scouts had come from Leicester for a weekend's 'venturing' and were portaging their canoes and kit around the first lock but with four more to go we decided that if we could lock with plastics on the Thames, we could lock with canoes on the cut. So from then on they piled in with us and those not in boats became an eager gang of lockwheelers.
If I were a scout leader on a field trip around water with a dozen teenagers – most on their first canoe outing – I reckon I'd need a hefty dose of Valium to see me through but these leaders were remarkably calm and the kids were having a ball without ever getting out of line. A good bunch to spend a Saturday afternoon boating with.

One of the narrow, reedy tight bends on this stretch

Before we'd reached the locks we'd gone through some of the most winding, narrow and shallow sections of the canal. Hard to imagine it was originally planned as a major line from Leicester through to Northampton to join the Grand Union. Like a lot of these schemes did, it ran out of money and stopped just short of Foxton. Enough was raised to take it on to Market Harborough five miles away but no further. And then some more cash was drummed up to take it on a new line through Foxton and Watford to Norton Junction. Except this stretch had narrow locks.
That meant there was a Watford Gap before ever there was an M1 motorway. Widebeam boats couldn't connect from south to north – and they still can't. Which some of us narrowboaters think is a Good Thing.
But the line to Market Harborough still exists. It nearly didn't but the first campaigning rally of the new Inland Waterways Association was held there back in 1950 to save it and rekindle interest in the moribund canal system.

Market Harborough basin, a model of regeneration

The old canal basin was to remain semi-derelict for another fifty years but is now a model of regeneration with a hire boat base, offices, flats and a bar all built in the old buildings and some well matched new ones. It's tidy, boaty and busy – way different to those all to common sterile blocks of canalside apartments that pay no more than lip service to being 'waterside'.
The canal that reaches it is almost river like: winding, wide and edged with reeds and weeds – save for a smelly passage past a 'meat rendering' works. Then it turns past the sizeable gardens of substantial pre-war homes toward the basin. We had spent a couple of days exploring this very likeable small town. The handsome main street has retained many of its handsome old Georgian shop and office frontages and the place feels affluent without being pretentious. In a smart planning move the town has also located all its supermarkets together in one town centre site to keep the centre alive. Sainsburys, Waitrose, Aldi and Lidl all sit there cheek by jowl. And living next door to its posh neighbour has clearly rubbed off on Aldi – it's the poshest one we've ever seen. Even the jumble sale aisle of bargain buys are all neatly folded and stacked.

Brian takes a final sniff at the bone crushing plant

But after the bustle of a town – our first since, oh, way back in the Midlands, we headed off towards our day of Venturing. Via a final overnight stop at the bottom of Foxton locks and a visit to the great little Bridge 61 pub there. It's a great pub: sat in the centre of one of the area's biggest tourist attractions it still manages to have the cosy feel of a village local. It's tiny and busy but full of charm. And it serves decent Adnams beer. We stopped for a pint and ended up having two – plus a couple of plates of sausages and onions in giant Yorkshire puddings. You have to be prepared don't you.
And finally...we first saw this boat at Streethay, then a couple of years later semi-sunk at Milton Keynes and now four more years on, being refitted by a couple at Debdale Wharf up here. Originally a hire boat and over 30 years old, it'll soon be a classic.

From 1980s hire boat, via a sinking to a floating home

Tempted by a boat and lured by a canal

Early morning temptation, this Simon Wain seventy footer

We woke up at Norton Junction, looked outside and both remarked on how handsome the big 70ft boat moored across the water was.
Two hours later we had nearly bought it!
The boat belonged to our mate from the Tollhouse. Tony buys and sells boats so anything he owns is up for sale. At the right price. Tony is also a delightful, patrician charmer who knows plenty about boats and even more about selling them. His patter is so smooth it melts in your brain. Not for nothing do we call him 'Swiss Tony' after the legendary Fast Show character.
"Everyone should own a 70ft boat at some time in their lives," he enthused. "And this one is proper. You won't find one like it these days. Simon (Wain) built it and hardly builds these days, Roger (Fuller) has given up, so has Graham (Edgson). It's too expensive; there's no money in it." You'll notice that Tony calls everyone by their christian names.
Trouble was, it was hard to disagree with anything he said. The boat was great: acres of space, handsome lines, a lovely JP2M engine, a fine back cabin ("look at that scumbly-wumbly"). We wanted it but we didn't want it. Why did we need a 70ft boat? We didn't. Tony agreed: we didn't need it. Which only made us want it more.

Sense prevails and we head in Watford locks in Harry

Then the dead hand of commonsense prevailed. We decided to go off and have a think – and fortunately perhaps got ourselves lost in the enchanting Leicester Section. It's about eight years since we came this way so we'd forgotten pretty much all of it bar its famous Foxton Lock flight of staircase locks and Foxton's less famous but arguably more charming smaller brother, the Watford flight. Watford of Gap fame, that is. Between the two is 20 miles of rural bliss; the canal only touches the edge of one modest village, Crick, and otherwise secrets itself in the undulating countryside of Leicestershire where sheep and cattle graze on the gentle slopes. It's utterly delightful, the more so for being so empty of boats.
When we were last here the villagers of Yelvertoft were up in arms about plans for a big new marina and, worse, applications for several windfarms in the area – all cunningly put in my different developers to different councils. The marina is now built and doesn't seem to have impacted on life and there's at least one windfarm, which is probably one too many for the locals.
We moored and walked down the short Welford Arm, like everywhere busier than I recall it, and then headed via the three-quarter mile Husbands Bosworth tunnel to Foxton. The Leicester is certainly a cure for tunnel-phobia – there are three, the longest being the 1500 yarder of Crick. Fortunately all are two-way so they lack the smokey claustrophobia of narrower ones.

And down the Foxton locks in the rain

The weather was the only thing spoiling our fun: it was grim. Wet and cold. The lockies at Foxton were hoping for a break in the warm. Then we arrived. Sorry! Foxton's two five-lock staircases are too complicated to be left to boaters (well they're not really but the price of a mistake could be the flooding of two houses and a pub.) It's a fiendishly clever set-up: one paddle sends water out of the lock into a big side pond while the next paddle reclaims it to fill the next lock down. In theory then a boat goes all the way down using up just one lock's worth of water.

The remains of the Inclined Plane from above

And from the old feeder canal at the base

It takes time, though – about 45 minutes – and when someone's coming down, no-one can go up. Which means queues and these days that demands lockies as referees. In the working boat days it probably meant rows and fist fights. Little wonder that they built the Inclined Plane around the corner to haul boats up and down in ten minutes. A boat was loaded into an iron tank or 'caisson' and hauled up using steam power and the counter-balancing weight of a boat coming down.
Unfortunately it wasn't reliable, cost a lot to run and the queues just re-formed at the Watford Locks which weren't improved so the Plane was abandoned and sold for scrap. Its remains can still be seen. What a tourist attraction a new one would be, they say. Hmmm. I'm inclined to think there are enough visitors there already and coachloads of trippers might just spoil the charm of this quiet country canal.

Enjoying an English summer!

Josher Emu passes us en route to Braunston

First we spent a few days sweltering in thirty plus degrees heat – that's 90+ degrees in the sort of old money that we pensioners still prefer. Now we are enduring little more than half that temperature and miserable drizzle to boot.
But, as they say, what would we English talk about round the locks if it wasn't the weather.
After hiding under the shade of a tree in Whittington for a couple of days waiting for Mrs B's emergency dental treatment, we pottered gently down towards Braunston in the company of various working boats all going to the same destination as us – the annual Boat Rally there.
We are a bit over-familiar with the route. It was the scene of our first ever canal boat owning journey ten years ago; a race against winter closures which turned into a race against winter itself as snow fell and the canals iced up.
The Coventry Canal hasn't really changed. The eleven spaced out Atherstone locks felt familiar and busy too. Nuneaton was an unchanging dump – a cameo of life there being the sight of two blokes swigging lager and fishing while a year old in a pushchair gazed blankly at an iPad: daddy day-care, Nuneaton style, while Charity Dock is still the same shambolic crazy mess of junk, rubbish and weird statues. I hope Nuneaton changes but Charity Dock never does.
We moored near Hawkesbury Junction where the Coventry meets the northern Oxford Canal. Moored behind us was a working boat en route to the show. Or rather half of one as it turned out. The owner had bought the front half of 'Gorse' and built a suitable cabin to match it to. Somewhere, it seems, is another owner with the original back half and a new front!
The northern Oxford, with its long straights, is rarely interesting but it still has memories for us of entertaining stops in pubs and a near flooding of Harry when Seadog Brian got on a worktop and knocked a tap on. No such incidents this time. We did see yet another monster marina under construction in this always crowded area though.
Braunston was inevitably doomed to be busy so we pulled up as soon as we saw moored boats – and left ourselves a half a mile walk through one of the most overgrown and crumbling away towpaths I've experienced. Down at Braunston Turn we passed the sad remnants of a burnt out Sea Otter – these are built in aluminium and so when they burn, they melt. There was virtually nothing left!

Not just burnt out but melted; the remains of a Sea Otter

I do like a crusty boat show. Last year we went to Lymm where boats, cars and traction engines provide the full classic transport experience). Braunston sticks to boats but there are more of them and the canal parade is a kind of vaguely organised chaos as boats attempt a circuit via a three-point turn at Braunston Turn, then back along the canal and through the marina.

The Braunston parade: organised chaos or maybe just chaos

Anything can happen and usually does from an ‘I know my rights’ private craft which has turned a blind eye to the multiplicity of boat rally warning notices around the area and then discovered that a 70ft boat and butty pair are a pretty formidable obstacle to encounter on a crowded canal, to a bunch of happy (in the alcoholic sense) hireboaters who panic at the sight of a enormous oncoming Big Woolwich bow, engage hard reverse and find themselves broadside across the cut.
The Turn is the place to watch, not just for the antics but for the artistry with which the steerers can manoeuvre their big boats. As someone who has never mastered the art of reversing a car and trailer, I'm in awe of people able to reverse 140ft of boat and butty back round a bend.

My favourite picture: English eccentricity

The boats are everything from painstakingly accurate pieces of history to battered and sometimes much altered survivors of nearly a century of life. I kind of prefer the latter, to be honest.
We were joined on Saturday afternoon by our youngest daughter and her large lurcher puppy - which seemed even larger inside a small narrowboat cabin...especially when he decided our bed would be his bed too for the night. After a fine Sunday lunch at the Old Plough up in Braunston village, daughter and dog headed home and we headed up the locks in the company of an Aussie couple who'd come over, bought a boat and were spending six months on the canals.

A large lurcher in a small boat

As I headed into the near mile and a half long Braunston Tunnel, I spotted the headlight of a working boat behind. He seemed to be catching up which gave me the excuse to wind the speedwheel and get a shift on. Twenty short minutes later we shot out the other end.
We cruised on down to Norton Junction and turned onto the Leicester Section of the Grand Union, mooring opposite the pretty Toll House where another mate of ours lives. What happened next was certainly a surprise.

Heading home

Tug talking with Tebay at Tixall

We are on familiar territory now, heading down the Trent & Mersey towards Fradley and then off to Streethay Wharf to say hello to old mates.
Streethay was where we refitted Harry and turned it from fire ravaged wreck to handsome tug, and before that where we based our first boat, Star, for refitting. It's our boating home, I guess.
We paid a brief visit to Stafford; brief because it's such a dismal place: a variety of edge of town malls have sprung up, pulling away all the big stores, and leaving a vacuum in the town centre. Walking down the wide, pedestrianised main street with its closed shops and shabby seventies parades you expect to see tumbleweed rolling past. And all of it presided over by the vast ugly council offices, looking like something out of Soviet era East Germany.
From Stafford, the run is a level, lock-free one for several miles, generally accompanied by the railway. In a rare bout of incuriousity, we passed three people standing on isolated canal bridges looking into the distance. By not asking them what they were watching for we missed a steam train, which roared past just as we disappeared behind a belt of trees. I'm guessing it was the Flying Scotsman. Damn!

Hot air balloons rise into the clear sky

The final lock on the Staffs & Worcs brought us to the beautiful open expanse of Tixall Wide where we moored behind another handsome tug, Tebay and settled in for some tug talk. It's a historic 1929 boat with a Kelvin engine and even deeper in the water than us. On an evening stroll we saw a pair of hot air balloons go up and drift off across the clear sky, then spoke to some lads fishing - and one caught a pike right in front of us. It was young and about ten pounds but big enough and with teeth looking mean enough to make me stand well clear while he released it.

Just keep well clear of those teeth!

Today we've wandered down from Great Haywood where the S&W joins the Trent & Mersey amid an increasing number of boats and a corresponding decreasing number of mooring spots. Finally we've tied up just above Wood End Lock on the run in to Fradley junction.