The Guardian discovers the Welland Valley: "An unsung alternative to the Cotswolds"

We've all heard of The Notswolds, and an article in the Guardian today adopts my definition of Les Notswolds profonds: the Welland Valley between Market Harborough and the Welland Viaduct.

Ben Lerwill visits Market Harborough:

The town itself has ancient Saxon roots and is easy to like, with a head-turning mix of Jacobean, Georgian and Victorian architecture. I stumble on Quinns, a cracking independent bookshop tucked down an alleyway, then devour a curry bowl at a lively cafe called Two Old Goats. 

A board on the street lists notable town residents through the ages, the most recent being rugby giant Martin Johnson. I read this, then turn and immediately see him on the pavement 10 metres away. It’s unclear if this clever routine is something he does for all visitors, but he’s hard to miss in any case.

He visits Foxton Locks:

The real pull of the Welland valley is the countryside, a slow-moving world of hushed green dales and drifting red kites. On local advice, I head to rural Foxton Locks – Britain’s highest combination of staircase canal locks, where 10 adjacent early 19th-century locks transport boats up and down a 23-metre hillside – for a gawp and a wander. “It takes 50 minutes for boats to get from one end to the other,” says volunteer Malcolm, who seems delighted to have a visitor to talk to. The neatly painted locks rise up handsomely beside us.

And he visits Medbourne to stay at one of the models for the Bonkers Arms:

My base is nearby Medbourne, one of numerous placid, calendar-pretty villages that stud the Welland valley. Medbourne has a clear stream, a lovely pub – the Nevill Arms, where I spend the night in a four-poster and enjoy exactly the kind of warming, candle-lit dinner you’d want from a country inn in winter – and cottages built of tough, reddish Leicestershire ironstone.

Best of all, be mentions a cafe in Great Easton I didn't know about.

Foxton Locks to reopen after the drought – for just a week

A major victim of this year's drought has been the canals of the Midlands, with many lengths of them closed to boats.

Among the closures are the two flights of staircase locks at Foxton near Market Harborough. Now BBC News reports that they are to reopen - but only for a week.

The Canal and River Trust said the site, near Market Harborough, will be open for a week between 27 October and 2 November.

The locks will be open from 10:00 BST to 15:00, with the last boat allowed in at 14:00. 

The locks between Foxton and Leicester will also open between those hours during the same week.

Explaining the brevity of Foxton's reopening, a spokesperson for the trust said:

"We're really pleased that recent rainfall has at least allowed us to reopen locks for a short period and enable boaters to get to where they need to be ahead of winter.

"While recent wet weather has been very welcome, it's not been enough to make up for the prolonged dry weather we've experienced for the majority of the year.

"Reservoir holdings are still well below what we would normally expect for this time of year, so we still need to be careful with our water and allow our reservoirs to refill ahead of next year's boating,"

And the BBC also reports that Saddington Reservoir, the nearest canal reservoir to the locks, was still only at 25 per cent capacity last month.

The drought has certainly brought home how vulnerable the inland waterways are to climate change. See the Canal and River Trust's Climate Adaptation Report for its own thinking on the subject.

In the mean time, you can see Foxton Locks above and Saddington Reservoir below.

Later. Due to the low water level, the section from Kilby Lock 30 to Kings Lock 38 will not be open for navigation after all.

Leicester Line of the Grand Union to close because of the drought

The Leicester Line of the Grand Union Canal – from Watford in Northamptonshire to Leicester – will be closed next week to conserve water, reports HFM News. This length includes the famous Foxton Locks near Market Harborough.

The Canal and River Trust has taken the decision because the reservoirs that feed the canal, including Saddington Reservoir, are unusually low because of the drought.

While drought will always be a problem for the canals, I get the impression that a backlog of maintenance, caused by the trust's financial position, was already leading to more closures than in a usual summer.

Anyway, you can see Foxton Locks above and Saddington Reservoir below.

One piece of good news for the canals is that the Welsh government has earmarked £5m to upgrade an emergency pumping station and keep the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal in water.

The canal's future was threatened by new laws that limit how much water it can take from the River Usk, though it's not clear from the Nation Cymru report that a long-term solution to the problem has been found.

The Joy of Six 1358

"Quite apart from winning Oxfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Shropshire outright, the Lib Dems are set to lead Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Devon councils, with the possibility of a deal in Hertfordshire, and a long shot at power in Cornwall." Matthew Pennell reviews the local elections.

Rei Takver reports that the new Reform UK constitution gives its chair sweeping, unchecked authority within the party.

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead on a report that shows women in the North of England face deep inequalities: "Northern women work longer hours for lower pay, are more likely to live in poverty, have fewer qualifications, and face a shorter life expectancy than women in other parts of the country. They are also more likely to take on unpaid caring responsibilities."

"International research has demonstrated that IM [independent mobility] benefits children physically, psychologically, cognitively and socially. IM allows children to explore their environments, at their own pace, based on their own decision-making processes. As such, IM increases children’s confidence, autonomy, social skills and capacity to move around public space while strengthening their bonds to and familiarity with place." Katherine L. Frohlich and Patricia A. Collins survey research on links between children’s right to the city, their independent mobility and public health.

"Well before the term 'nepo babies' entered the cultural lexicon, Bogdanovich cast a real father and daughter as Moses and Addie. ... Bogdanovich had recently worked with Ryan O'Neal on What’s Up Doc, though he actually approached the actor’s eight-year-old daughter Tatum to audition first, at Platt’s suggestion." Sara Batkie celebrates Peter Bogdanovich's film Paper Moon on its 50th birthday.

Jeremy Benson walks the canal towpath from Leicester to Market Harborough.

Celebrate the 75th anniversary of Market Harborough's Festival of Boats and Arts (6-7 June)

Embed from Getty Images

The Inland Waterways Association was formed in 1946, but it was not until the 1950 Festival of Boats and Arts, held in Market Harborough, that the campaign to save the inland waterways really became established as a national crusade. The festival is generally thought to be the tipping point of the waterways revival, triggering the mass-participation on a volunteering spirit which is still unique in the world.

To celebrate the 75th anniversary of that event, a festival will be held at Foxton in Leicestershire on Saturday 7 June and Sunday 8 June. 

Market Harborough canal basin is no longer suitable to host such events, but it will be visited by a cavalcade of boats on the Saturday. You can find full details of the event on the IWA Harborough 75 website.

The festival is supported by the IWA Leicestershire Branch in partnership with the Canal and River Trust, the Old Union Canal Society, Harborough District Council and Foxton Museum.

You can read more about the 1950 event on the festival website, and there are a couple of posts on this blog that may interest you:

• A journey by water from Oxford to attend the 1950 event;
• A meeting between Robert Aickman and Market Harborough UDC about a second festival in 1952.

The photo at the top shows the boatwoman Sonia Smith, who was to marry her fellow waterways campaigner Tom Rolt, at the 1950 festival. And, yes, the Robert Aickman who met Market Harborough UDC was the writer of ghost stories.

A mud-walled outbuilding in Foxton

Yesterday was sunny, so I went to Foxton Locks for the umpteenth time. Yet I still noticed something new in the village.

This outbuilding has mud walls, parts of which were later replaced with brick. Its roof would presumably once have been thatched.

There are more examples of such walls on this blog's mud walls label.

Oxford to Market Harborough by water in 1950

Another transport video that I've posted before and is overdue a repeat.

This colour film shows a journey from Oxford to the National Festival and Rally of Boats held at Market Harborough held at 1950. 

Enjoy footage of the old railway swing bridge over the canal at Oxford and then the canal through city, with the campanile of St Barnabas easily recognisable. 

Then it is on to some some broad locks that must be on the Grand Union somewhere near Braunston. This part of the film is then repeated, but no one will mind, I am sure.

After that it is on to Watford locks, Foxton locks and the canal basin here in Market Harborough.

From Foxton to Smeeton Westerby via Debdale Wharf

If you are one of the dwindling band of survivors of the 1985 Liberal Party Assembly at the Caird Hall in Dundee, then this is where your programme was mailed from. It used to be the post office for the Leicestershire village of Foxton, and that was where the assembly was organised from - in two semi-converted narrow boats, naturally.

This afternoon I went for a short walk along the canal from Foxton to Debdale Wharf and then along a glorified farm track to Smeeton Westerby. Incidentally, the King's Head at Smeeton is in new hands, well stocked with Langton Brewery beers and deserves your support.

Here are some photos from the walk.

Market Harborough buses under threat from Conservative chaos

Some bus routes serving Market Harborough could be scrapped because of the the budget crisis facing Leicestershire County Council.

HFM News, with a clip from an interview with Liberal Democrat councillor Simon Galton, reports:

The authority has warned its financial outlook is ‘dire’ and ahead of budget proposals being made public next week, some details have been shared with councillors.

Cuts could be made to bus services subsidised by the authority, which include the number 33 town service in Market Harborough and route 44, which links the town with Foxton and Fleckney.

Conservatives are now a complete shambles. Only last year the government announced a £3bn scheme to improve bus services outside London.

We were promised hundreds of miles of new bus lanes, fares with daily price caps so people can use the bus as many times a day as they need, more services in the evenings and at weekends, integration with train tickets and that all buses would accept contactless payments.

The Guardian caught the rapturous tone of the announcement:

The DfT said it expected to see local authorities and operators working together to deliver bus services so frequent that passengers could just "turn up and go" - no longer needing to rely on a traditional timetable and no longer having to wait more than a few minutes.

Boris Johnson said: "Just as they did in London, our reforms will make buses the transport of choice, reducing the number of car journeys and improving quality of life for millions."

Leicestershire County Council did put in a £58m for more government funding for bus services earlier this year, apparently because it "lacked ambition".

How things have turned out is a classic illustration of Boris Johnson's ability to identify issues that matter to voters and his inability to be arsed to do anything about them, and also of the damage done by too many changes at 10 and 11 Downing Street.

Because Market Harborough is not alone in facing cuts to its bus services. 

Back in July, the Guardian reported that at least 135 bus routes across England were due to be cut or scrapped altogether.

And in case you thought "levelling up" would save the North of England from cuts, 25 routes in Liverpool and 40 across the North East were affected.

But that's the modern Conservative Party for you. The right hand doesn't know what the left hand's doing, and you can be sure that, if it ever finds out, it will do its best to stop it.

Telling at the Robert Monk Hall, Foxton

The is Foxton village hall, which opened in 1931 and is in a vaguely Tudor style. It was a gift from Robert Monk, who came from the village and made his money running the Robin Hood Hotel on Gallowtree Gate in Leicester.

I was there today and thought of 1986, when the Liberals won three Harborough District Council by-elections in a row. I gained Market Harborough North, Simon Galton gained Thurnby, and Colin Wells gained Foxton, Lubenham and Gumley.

The third of those by-elections took place on 9 October. I can date it because I remember it was the week the Independent launched and I read one of the newspaper's very first issues while telling at the Robert Monk Hall, which was the polling station for Foxton.

It's less a memory than a flashback: there were two Conservative tellers and they spent their time discussing a horse that had suffered a nosebleed. Foxton seemed that sort of village.

The old road to Foxton Locks

I've blogged before about how I worked for the organiser of the Liberal Party Assembly in 1985. That summer the office was housed on two narrow boats at Foxton Locks.

The photo above shows where the boats were moored - on the arm that served the bottom of the inclined plane that once took boats up and down the hill here.

A lot has changed at Foxton since then, notably there's now a proper car park for visitors and a new road to serve it.

What used to be the road to the bottom of the locks is now a footpath.* Ironically, it is in much better condition than it ever was as a road. Then it had enough large potholes to keep a Focus team pointing for a fortnight.

I remember guiding the chief stewards van down it when he arrived to collect the assembly programmes which the printers van had brought a couple of days before.

Today it was all sheep and May blossom, with not a pothole in sight.

* The final stretch of the path is new - the old road ran along the bank of the canal for a little. But, going uphill, once you are through the first gate you are on what was the road all the way to the top.

The Montgomery Canal at Welshpool, 1973

Photo: Harry Arnold

'The last of the Inland Waterways Association Bulletins I bought at Foxton last summer is the issue for March 1973.

Taken from it, this photograph shows the Montgomery Canal at Welshpool. Below is a photograph of the same scene I took in 2014.

My plan had been to return my IWA Bulletins to Foxton Locks, where I bought them, and come away with a new batch. That plan will have to be postponed.

A visit to the drained Foxton Locks

 I recommend a visit to Foxton Locks when they are drained if you get the chance.

Two years ago I went myself.

Freeman's Meadow Lock, Leicester, in 1967

In 1965 the Inland Waterways Association held its National Rally of Boats at Blackburn.

Two years later it was held in Leicester and the second of the old IWA Bulletins I bought at Foxton earlier this summer covers it.

The most interesting photograph is the one above, whose caption includes the following:

But Leicester still faces problems, such as ... its present treatment of the Grand Union alongside the power station at Freeman's Meadow Lock, a perfect setting for large scale redevelopment.

I went to the lock today to see if I could replicate this photograph of the weir - the Grand Union merges with the River Soar for its journey through Leicester - with the railway bridge behind it.

It must have been taken from the power station as the industrial buildings in the background are the gas works off Aylestone Road.

The writer of the caption got his way as the power station site is now occupied by Leicester City's King Power Stadium.

I took the photograph below from its car park today.

The 1967 photo, by my calculation, was taken from a vantage point now occupied by the car park of the neighbouring Holiday Inn.

But the river bank is fenced off there and trees have grown up, so my attempt to replicate it was defeated.

Freeman's Meadow Lock, which is right next to a weir, is still a remarkable spot. I took lots more photos there today and will share them with you another time.

Foxton Locks in the sun

Living in Market Harborough, my instinct on a hot day is to head for Foxton Locks.

I did it today and even managed a mad-dogs-and-Englishmen walk across the fields to the Bell at Gumley.

Foxton, of course, is where the 1985 Liberal Assembly was organised from. The green track in the last photograph here was then the road access to the bottom of the locks.

36 Leicestershire bus routes under threat from the Conservatives

Grim news in the Leicester Mercury:

Bus routes at risk after the county council approved plans to cut £400,000 from the passenger transport budget have been identified. 

Leicestershire County Council will look at services that it currently provides over the next five months before making a decision on which routes it will continue to provide and which will be scrapped.

A series of consultations on threatened services has been announced - there are 36 in total.

The consultation on three routes serving Market Harborough - the 58 to Lutterworth, the 44 to Fleckney and Foxton and the 33 town service - will take place in July.

The omens are not good. Leicestershire Conservatives tweeted an attack on Labour and the Liberal Democrats for trying to defend bus services in the council's budget meeting.

And the council's director of transport, as quoted by the Mercury, has a patronising attitude and seems to find the idea of bus services faintly ridiculous:

"We can’t offer gold plated vehicles but we can work within the financial envelope to develop ideas with communities. 

"People’s idea of public transport is a 52 seater bus driving around at this time from this place, stopping here, but things are changing now."

But at least I will have one more summer with local bus services to aid my explorations.

National Festival and Rally of Boats at Market Harborough, 1950

The Inland Waterways Association held its first national rally at Market Harborough in 1950.

This film was shot there and includes some nice shots of the canal basin.

Then the action moves on to Foxton and some unidentified locations.

You may also be interested in film of a boat making its way to the rally from Oxford.

Saddington reservoir, the 44 bus and Richard Jefferies

What to do this Saturday? Now we have reasonable weather again, a country walk sounded like a good idea. One by water even more so. But where to walk?

Yesterday the idea hit me. I have seen Saddington reservoir from the garden of the village's pub, the Queen's Head, and remembered a very minor road that went past it from a cycle ride decades ago.

Saddington reservoir was built to supply water to the Leicester line of the Grand Union Canal and now has a sailing club. Despite the many minatory notices, it was possible to walk the length of its dam.

There were no yachts out on the water, only anglers. And, inevitably, I was reminded of Richard Jefferies and Bevis.

After the reservoir, I climbed up to Gumley, walked down the main street of the village (finding its pub open) and then across the fields to Foxton locks.

One sad note: this walk was only possible because the 44 bus took me out to Saddington and home from Foxton. It is one of the routes under serious threat because of cuts to council spending.