When canal fanciers gather to talk of the glories of bygone ages, soon enough the talk will turn to the Foxton Inclined Plane. An inclined plane is a fancy way of saying ramp, but it’s what was going up and down the ramp that was important. A whole section of the canal large enough to hold two narrowboats was sealed off and lowered down the ramp, counterbalanced by another one coming up. A steam engine provided the extra energy to overcome friction. The total vertical distance was 75 feet.

Sadly for the canal nuts, and anyone else who admires unorthodox engineering, the inclined plane only operated for ten years. It was supposed to replace a flight of ten locks, but ended up competing with them, and the locks won. So, today we went down ten locks, in two staircases of five each.

There were five boats ahead of us when we arrived, but fortunately there was no traffic coming uphill, so the wait was less than an hour – time for us to grab breakfast from the cafe at the top of the fight and pick up some hitchhikers.

As you can see there was a full range of fats and carbohydrates for hungry boaters.

After we made it down the flight we made a right turn onto an arm of the canal that runs to Market Harborough. This was originally intended to be a shortcut to Northampton, but never made it that far. The terminal basis now has a boat rental business, and the canal sees more traffic these days than when it was hauling goods.