19 August 2011 - Kilby Bridge to Foxton

With water fast disappearing down a plug hole somewhere in the canal, we got up early and were ready to set off to the next lock, ready for British Waterways to unpadlock it.  We were pipped to the post by Nb. Millrace whom we had got chatting to in the pub last night, motoring out at about 8.30.  We followed minutes behind and were soon joined by Brian in Nb. Presque La.  Brian brested up on Ceilidh as we all waited for the BW man to arrive.  It quickly became clear it wasnt going to be a 9am opening - the restriction had been tightened to operation only between the hours of 10am and 2pm.  We would have just 4 hours to get to lock 18 from lock 29 a difficult task.  However we were joined by Nb. Laura Colleen with a crew of 4.  a pair of narrowboats working together is ideal and now we had 2 pairs.  It was decided Ceilidh work with Millrace and Laura Colleen work with Presque La as both Millrace & Presque La were single handers (a technical term for mad people who boat on their own)

Millrace was built by J Pinder Ltd - the same boat builder as Ceilidh

The BW chap duly arrived and removed the padlocks so we could make a start.  The pounds differed in length from a couple of hundred yards to over a mile, and each varied in depth.  Some were normal level allowing swift passage, but several were very low.  Our boats became mud-skippers and at times were not churning their way through water at all, but seemingly liquid mud.

Whilst we were following Millrace quite closely, at one point he went into a lock ahead of us, immediately to be followed by another boat which had been moored up, before we could get there.  There were now 5 boats in our convoy, and getting them all to lock 18 by 2pm was going to be even harder.  This wasn't helped by our new addition being  'several sandwiches short of a picnic' as Millrace described.  One of Laura Colleen's crew walked ahead to lock 18 and got the waiting BW operatives reassurance that he would not lock up until we were all through that section - which we all managed by about 2:10pm.

We all made our way towards the Foxton flight, through the Saddington Tunnel (800 yards).  Ceilidh and Laura Colleen stopped off at Debdale Marina - we filled up with diesel and pumped out our loo tank - before  getting to Foxton.  Our 'forced march' because of restricted hours due to the water shortage has meant that we have actually got here much faster than anticipated so we decided to turn left to Market Harborough tomorrow (2 hours) and come back to continue up the Foxton flight on Sunday.