Day 3 - Monday
Usually, at the start of the week, it can be difficult to find pubs that are open, never mind serving food, at lunchtimes. Today was not one of those days!
We were travelling along the summit level of the Leicester Section of the Grand Union Canal which meant that we had to negotiate Foxton Locks. Ten locks arranged in to two staircases of five locks each; a magnificent setting and a magnet for gongoozlers of all ages! There was a bit of a wait at the top and we were the fourth boat in the queue - it could have been much worse! This is the view from the first lock of the second five.
With help from the volunteer lockkeepers we were soon down at the bottom where we turned left (heading for Leicester) and moored up for lunch in the imaginatively named Foxton Locks Inn.
For a Monday it was pleasantly busy, but table service was the order of the day. The food was good as was the beer and so we returned to Peggy Ellen for the next stage of our journey.
At the bottom of Foxton, you can turn left towards Leicester (leading to the River Soar) or right towards the terminus at Market Harborough. Most boats took the latter option whilst we headed towards Leicester.
As it was early August and the canal had been very busy up to this point, we were hopeful that we'd have plenty of company to share the many wide locks en route to Leicester. Sadly, this was not the case and we saw only a handful of boats all the way to Leicester.
Our first stop along this route was at Fleckney which isn't exactly a canalside village!
This was the walk into the village, which boasts two pubs...neither of which was serving food on a Monday night! (and the chippy was closed!)
We've visited the Old Crown in the past and it is a perfectly decent local village pub. Ordinarily, it would have been a one pint and we're moving on pub...except...although they weren't doing food themselves, parked out front was a pizza van making freshly made pizzas that could be consumed in the pub. What a result! They have different vans/trucks on different nights...a fantastic idea!
We still decided to move on for a couple in the more upmarket Golden Shield; Fleckney's other pub.
Last time we'd been to Fleckney, this is where we'd eaten, but the restaurant wasn't open on a Monday. It seemed to be little changed from the time the late Alan Winfield visited it ten years earlier and reviewed it on Pubs Galore. Day 4 - Tuesday
From Fleckney it is a long journey to Leicester through 20+ wide locks (with no one to share the joy work!) and the next pub was a long way away ay Kilby Bridge. We moored up at about 2pm!
The Navigation is a lovely old, proper canalside pub and we were happy to see that it was open. Unfortunately, they weren't doing food and when I asked about cobs/rolls I was given a quite brusque, "No, we don't do them they only get left uneaten!" Oh well, a lunch of crisps, nuts and scratchings wasn't the end of the world!
Then, about 15 minutes later, the other barman (possibly landlord) appeared with large trays of freshly made sandwiches, mini scotch eggs and sausage rolls which were offered to us and the other half dozen people in the pub...for free! Fantastic customer service!
So, after a great lunchtime session, we set off again for Leicester. Still very little traffic and some quite shallow sections, but we made it to Leicester without too much hassle.
The Globe was our first port of call and, whist it is a great old pub, it was disappointing to see it so empty! Unfortunately, we only had the one pint before we set off in search of food. We found a lovely curry at a place called Tandem and then went for more beer at the High Cross...the local Wetherspoon's...which was considerably busier than The Globe had been (as were many of the other bars in that vicinity)!
And that was it for our night out in Leicester, but in our defence, we didn't moor up until after 8pm and the canal/river is a bit of a walk from the city centre.
(To be Continued)
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