Goslings and cygnets.

10 Locks 8 miles and 1 tunnel, Now moored on the Market Harborough arm.
Total of 246 locks and 283 miles and 13 Tunnels since 5th Nov 2006

This morning was cold and overcast with a cold wintery wind. Being Sunday we had expected a lot of boats on the move but the inclement weather must have kept them all at home snug in front of the fire, so we didn’t strike any hold ups. This included going through the Husbands Bosworth tunnel alone as there were no other boats about.
The first distraction for the day was another pair of Canadian geese with 4 Goslings which we slowed down for and fed them some bread.
As we neared the Foxton flight we came across a pair of swans with 6 cygnets which we duly stopped to photograph and feed.

It was quite strange in the fact the male was in no way aggressive towards us as they are usually very protective and that he stayed back and let the cygnets and his mate have all the food. He made no attempt to get any of the food at all.
As we had passed along this stretch of canal only a week or so ago we couldn’t recall having seen the swan nesting in the area where we were. When we arrived at the top of the Foxton flight we realised that it was the pair that had nested on the peninsular between the locks and the arm to the inclined plane. Where we saw them this morning was a good half mile away down the canal. Not long after we had moored past bridge 60 the swans turned up again as they had followed us back to the nest site.
We had a lovely lunch of freshly made banana bread and banana muffins before we went for the usual exploratory walk. When we got to the top of the flight we found not much activity at all except 2 boats going down. We originally planned to go down the flight tomorrow but when we found the lock keeper and he told us we could follow them down straight away which we did. By this time the weather had improved and the gongoozlers were coming out in their droves. By the time we reached the bottom lock I had to push through the throng to get to the lock controls and there was plenty of willing muscle wanting to help opening and shutting the gates.
We moored just past Fox Boat services on the Harboro arm and took Jim and Jean back to see the inclined plane and the museum.
Oh dear, Fox boats staff have just returned with their day boat breasted up to one of their hire boats and it was easy to see why, the tiller arm had snapped off and was laying on the deck. Bit hard to steer like that.