Inclined plane, Foxton Locks

No, I've never heard of it before either! I'll come back to it.

We started with a walk around Market Harborough and a coffee and cake in a different cafe to yesterday. Then from there we returned to Foxton Locks to visit the small museum and the remains of the boat lift and inclined plane. This was a short lived mechanism for lifting the narrow boats from the bottom canal to the top, using a series of pullies driven by steam. It opened in 1900 and stopped working in 1911, eventually being dismantled completely in 1928. For an ingenious idea and what seemed a quick process (12 minutes to move a boat from bottom to top or vice versa) it's a shame it was so short lived. But the increased use of the railways was used as the reason for it's demise. Interesting and like nothing I've seen before. It is at times like this I'd like to talk to dad. He had such a huge knowledge of anything mechanical, I'm sure he would have known about it. Anyway, Jon and I feel we learnt something today.

We walked back into the village and went in to the church, then walked around the village in a circle. There are not many 'old' (pre late 19th century) houses, so we couldn't really imagine his 18th and 19th century ancestors in any of those remaining, but its a pretty village. I wanted find an old school, where spinster great great great aunt Sarah (or something like that) was the school mistress mid 1800s, but think it was in the church vestry at that time. The Foxton village website has quite a lot of info.

We drove back home the long way (we missed a turning!) and came back through Naseby again.

I cooked a vegetarian chilli which we had with peshawar naans! Tomorrow we will have the other half with jacket potatos!

An evening of more games, plus chilling with our books, and the radio.