Foxton Locks: Liberal Assembly Office 1985

Last November I wrote about Foxton Locks and the summer I spent there working for the Liberal Party's Assembly Office. I quoted an old article of mine from the Guardian website:

This being the old Liberal party, it was naturally housed in two semi-converted narrow boats moored deep in the Leicestershire countryside.

I was back there today with my camera. The photograph above shows the arm at the bottom of the old inclined plane where those boats were moored. They were on the lefthand side of the canal, furthest from the camera.

Understandably, the area looked less bleak this afternooon than it did in November, but it still far less lush and overgrown than it was in 1985. The photographs below show the same boats from above and the concrete grooves which held the rails on which boats were taken up the hill sideways in great tanks.



It is a sad irony that one of my memories of that summer at Foxton is that England won back the Ashes and David Gower could not stop scoring centuries. Today I went out partly because the news from Headlingley was so depressing.

Oh, and in the post from November I mentioned that some people worry that I mix truth and fantasy in my writings. Having seen a biopic about Hunter S. Thompson I now realise that I have independently invented gonzo journalism.