Friday 8/5 Smeeton Westerby to Union Wharf, Market Harborough

Awoke to a beautiful sunny morning. We had a lazy start as we didn't have far to travel. Tim, very happy with the outcome of the election, took himself for a long walk along the towpath to encourage his innards to behave as they still haven't become accustomed to the weird and wonderful functioning of a narrowboats evacuation system. We pulled the pins about 9.30 and travelled for about an hour before out first stop, just before the Foxton Junction, for a water fill.

We then turned into the normally busy junction, to luckily find it empty as we hovered, indecisively, temporarily geographically embarrassed until we worked out which branch to take. The correct route was barred by a pedestrian swing bridge, something we had not yet encountered. Lawrence, once again, showed his skill - to a disappointingly small crowd of onlookers - by reversing in a straight line and then gliding Aqualife gently into the bank so Mike and I could get off and deal with the swing bridge, which involed the use of a CART key, and a couple of levers before we could swing the bridge out of the way. Luckily Mike was with me to work out the order in which things were to be done.

Looking back on the swing bridge and Foxton Junction behind the bridge.

A little while later we moored up at the edge of Foxton Village to have an early lunch and await the arrival of the Aqua Narrowboat lads to attend to the leaking radiator and the unknown leak in the main bedroom. Lunch was, now I am not going to spell these correctly, spanakopitas and baklavas that Tim and Mike purchased at the farm shop they walked to yesterday. Yummy

The Aqua lads arrived just as we finished lunch and the leaking radiator was swiftly death with. The damp patch on the bedroom carpet took a little more investigation and some dismantling of walls and lots of bums up and heads down to find the problem. Turned out to be a leaking valve delivering flush water to the loo. Job done, the boys had a cup of tea with us and heard about our adventures so far. And luckily they did, Lynden heard the water pump cycling and went to investigate and found the loo about to overflow - not a pleasant thought and it didn't do anything for Tim's feelings about our bathroom facilities! The solinoid in the new valve was faulty, so the clever lads made a new valve out of the good bits of the old valve and the good bits of the new faulty valve and with some more bums up and heads down (one must be a contortionist to do maintenance on a narrowboat) and voila I have dry carpet beside my bed and a perfectly functioning loo.

The Aqua team departed and we were soon on our way again, shortly to be confronted by another swing bring, this time a road bridge. So not only were keys and levers involved, we had to stop the traffic and swing barriers across the road. Once again Mike was invaluable, deciphering the instructions for me. The arm to Market Harborough is a contour canal, so we had glimpses through the hedgerow, as we motored along, of the beautiful valley of the River Welland spread out below us.

I had some more,steering practice and as the arm is quite narrow, with reedy margins and is very twisty and turny as it snakes it's way around the contour of a hill I am very happy to report I managed to stick to the middle of the canal without any close encounters with the reeds and managed to get around some very tight turns unscathed, and through a couple of bridge holes without mishap. Mind you I didn't encounter anyone coming the other way.

MH is a prosperous town and unlike Leicester, MH values the canal and we passed some well kept and very attractive gardens, some were very formal, others, very carefully planned au natural and everything else in between, on the approach to town.

For Betty, first bluebells we have seen.

 Mike and Tim were in their element, identifying plants, oohing an aahing over some gardens and dismissing others. All along this stretch are 7 day and 48 hour linear moorings for visiting boats. But they weren't for us. I had ignored Lawrence and booked us into the wharf, I wasn't going to pass up the luxury of electricity and water on tap plus access to loos, showers, rubbish bins etc, but alas, no laundromat. Plus the taxi can pull up 10 metres from the boat to take Tim and Mike and their luggage to the station when they leave us tomorrow.

We reached the end of the arm and Union Wharf and Lawrence neatly deposited me on the services mooring to go and find out where to moor. To reach our mooring Lawrence was required to spin Aqualife through 360o and back into our mooring! which he did seamlessly without touching another a boat and with only the gentlest of touches to our pontoon? Heads always pop out of boats when hire boats are required to do tricky manoeuvres - my hero left them disappointed! Our mooring for the next two nights.

After getting ourselves settled and in our guests case finding out where the real loos were, we researched train timetables and then wandered down into the town centre, about a 10 min walk. It was quite disconcerting to be walking down hill into a town -most times one walks uphill into a village or town from the canal - until it is remembered that this arm is built along a contour. We checked out the restaurants for our farewell dinner and noted important landmarks such as the butcher and baker for restocking tomorrow. We had a happy farewell dinner and wandered back to the boat reminiscing about our adventure together. I am pretty sure we have nb converts in Mike and Tim.

Big day today: 7mls, 0 locks, 2 swing bridges in 3 hours.