Narrowboat Balmaha – Foxton to Blaby Bridge

Monday 28th Jan to Saturday 2nd Feb 2008

Felt Market Harbro’ calling again so we caught the bus from Foxton village and hurtled down country lanes to town for a spot of shopping. Bought a couple of those little USB flash ram devices from Argos. £12 for 2GB isn’t bad I thought. If only solar panels had come down in price like computer memory.
Spoke too soon, a memory upgrade for our little Tosh’ has gone up to £79 for 1GB. It isn’t fair (as our kids used to say) more modern computers can use DDR2 ram which is half the price.

But hot choccy and enormous toasted tea-cakes with lashings of real butter at “Joules” made up for any disappointment.

Hardly needed lunch after that.

Tuesday saw us move to Kilby Bridge. Couldn’t get on the 48 hour moorings, too many continuous moorers there. Dare I name and shame?
Instead of APCO moaning about continuous cruisers and raising the old licence fee issues again, perhaps they should be doing something constructive to rid the place of continuous moorers. Then, I’m sure their customers would find vacancies at pubs and water points along the popular hire boat routes.

Don’t know what the local walkers thought was going on in Saddington Tunnel but we were stopping and starting at both ends while we looked at the bat boxes. I’m sure I saw a bat clinging to the outside of a box last time through but today they’re all snug and warm inside.

On the way we passed our local BW heroes doing a spot of maintenance on bollards in the vicinity of what was the “Navigation” at bridge 75 (Kibworth Bridge). Not a lot of people know that the farm next to the bridge had a pub where farmers sold their home made ales.
Anyway, good work BW, keep it up. And yes, we did see you inside “Avon”, and no, you didn’t offer us a cup of tea.

Can’t praise our local team too much, they are what BW is all about - keeping the waterways open and in first class condition.

On the other hand we received a letter from BW HQ telling us we haven’t got a licence. We know that, they know that, but I just had to call and ask why they were wasting paper. “Wait a minute” she said. “Oh yes, it appears your application is being dealt with today, sorry for the letter, we have had issues with the new Leeds office”.

Next day - hooray, we’ve had news that our licence is in the post. But now, all of a sudden, I don’t feel any sense of urgency in getting hold of it or putting the little paper squares in our portholes.

Some more good news. The lads at Blog.Co.Uk have been tinkering with the cocoa tins on string and we have managed a whole day on their website without down time. Well done. And we won’t mention T-Mobile who wouldn’t acknowledge there was a problem in the first place.

A special thank you from us to all those who left comments here and messages elsewhere to help us sort the problems with our USB modem.

Wasn’t it windy on Wednesday night and wasn’t the water high. If this keeps up we won’t have to lift paddles to fill locks going south, there’s enough coming over the top gates.

Nothing to do with canals, apart from their origins in Canal Street Wigston, Premier Drums have downsized (again) to a Kibworth location, south of Leicester. Once 350 strong they are now down to 40 employees. This is the price of competing with China, in fact their drums are not made here anymore, they all come from the Far East.
Apparently their new offices are close to the railway bridge that starred in the film Great Train Robbery. Not many people know that.

I remember looking through the windows of Mickleburghs, Bristol when I was a teenager and lusting after a set of drums. Premier and Beverley were two makes, there was a choice of pearl or sparkle finish. Got as far as buying a bass pedal before motorbikes diverted all my spare cash. I know it’s very sad but I sat in on band practises tapping on up-turned saucepans with knives while the guitars had all the fun and got all the glory. Sam, John, Gramps, I wonder where they all are now?

Back to boats – Pete tells a riveting story of his first journey (dash home) in his new sail-away nb.Pickles2. Poor fella, fancy falling in the canal this weather. I know that feeling, I fell part way in on a cold January day and was crushed by the boat which took away the shock of the cold water. He also stopped at Pinders like we did on our first night out of Hanbury Wharf. We found them most accommodating and wondered why we hadn’t considered them when we were looking for a boat builder. Probably the usual story, no build slots.

If you missed Waterworld this week you can see it on www.itvlocal.com/central/documentaries. Scroll down to find the programme and click all over the place until you see the “view now” button. We were heartened to see nb.Valhalla on the programme – well done Alan and Jo for an excellent presentation and a unique boat design.

Like most of you we had a snow flurry. One minute it was wall to wall sunshine and the next it went black and the snow came in sideways. The towpath at Blaby Bridge was white this morning to complement the sheet of ice covering the canal.

Surprised, pleasantly surprised, to see boats on the move through Leicester. Could it be half-term the week after next? We’ve always said this was a beautiful stretch of canal, hardly anyone about (on or off boats) and providing one picks the right time of day and right day of the week it presents both nature and industrial history at its best. Limekiln to Belgrave is still desperately in need of a clean up but providing you don’t fall in there’s nothing to worry about.

Despite the snow and freezing wind we were greeted by flowers at Blaby Bridge. Can’t remember its name but it’s one of those quick spreading evergreen plants with pale blue flowers that must have leaked through from behind the towpath hedge.

Talking of flowers, our own little flower has had the lawnmower treatment. V had her hair altered from long flowing tresses that spread out over the pillow to a bob. Maybe not a true bob but it is short. But she still looks prettier than any flower I’ve ever seen.
(Do I get a cooked meal tonight.....?)

Now here’s another interesting canal thing. While I’ve been researching stone mason’s marks on locks and bridges west of here, I’ve now been introduced to brick marks on GU bridges.
I can hear yawns but there’s more.
Unsure who made the marks but there are bridges on the summit section of the Leicester Line south of Foxton that have been scribed with numbers relating to the plots that the canal passed through during construction, around the time of 1809. I may write some more on the subject, later, if you’re unlucky.