The 29 winding miles that reveal another side of the Midlands

Over the coming weeks and months, Paul Miles will be following in the wake of narrowboating pioneer LTC Rolt, retracing a journey he made – and wrote about – more than 80 years ago, reflecting on how England has changed, and considering why so many people still find pleasure on the country’s canals. This is the second part of his journey. You can read the first part here. 

“Those who imagine that the Midlands of England have become no more than a vast built-up area should desert the familiar roads and railways, and take a canal boat over the Leicester section of the Grand Union canal from Norton Junction to Market Harborough. In all these 29 winding miles the ‘Leicester Cut’, as the boatmen call it, passes through only one village.”

Author LTC (Tom) Rolt wrote these words during his 1939/1940 honeymoon boat trip with his first wife, Angela. Eighty-five years later, on my journey in their wake, it seems that, on this stretch at least, not a great deal has changed. I’ve just cruised that twisty section. There were few houses, roads, people or boats (moored or moving) to be seen.

That said, soon after leaving Norton Junction there was a bottle-neck, with the seven Watford Locks to ascend, four of which are in a “staircase”. As I waited for more than an hour for boats to descend and a volunteer to help me on my way up, I filled the water tank and made a cup of tea.

You should never be in a hurry on the canals. I had nowhere particular to be before nightfall, as long as it offered a pleasant rural view and relative peace. In the end I moored not far above the locks, the M1 a white noise in the background, with a view of fields and oak trees. I did some laundry, put my washing line up on the quiet, wide towpath and watched sheets dry in the evening sun.

In the morning I cycled back down the towpath to Watford Gap motorway service station, adjacent to the canal and with pedestrian access through a lorry park. I bought a newspaper and milk. Rolt would certainly have been surprised by the sight of families eating hamburgers for breakfast and men gambling on fruit machines. As I wheeled my bike through parked lorries, there was a whiff of marijuana. I hoped the driver was getting ready for bed and not to be at the wheel doing 70mph.

Watford Gap, that comedy shorthand for the boundary between South and North, is more than a motorway service station. The gap is topographical – a pass between two ranges of hills that has made for easy passage between the Midlands and south-east since Roman times.

There was no motorway in Rolt’s day, but he writes about cruising below Watling Street, the course of a Roman road, now known as the A5 and since superseded – for most traffic – by the M1. The canal also passes below “the main line of the LMS railway” on which steam trains of the London, Midland and Scottish railway chuffed. Now electric Avanti trains speed overhead. Canal, roads and railway all squeeze through this nexus within a few yards of each other.

Culturally, Watford Gap is also a linguistic border, an “isogloss”, marking a change in accents from South to North. According to linguists, north of here there is one less vowel sound. Foot rhymes with strut.

Onwards I cruised, through Crick tunnel and past a wharf which was not used in Rolt’s day but now has services for boaters: water tap, elsan (toilet) disposal, recycling and rubbish bins. The wharf and “new” (since 1939) marina next door are now home to hundreds of privately owned narrowboats. Most seemed to be moored on their pontoons, owners enjoying sociable drinks onboard rather than cruising the cut.

This “lost and lonely waterway,” as Rolt called it, continues to twist and turn. His description that “tall rushes and flags of innumerable varieties lined the margins, growing so far into the water, and leaving a channel so narrow that on approaching some of the endless turns it looked as though the canal would disappear altogether” could have been written today.

With oaks and willows dipping close to the water, dragonflies strafing the boat, it all felt like cruising through a jungle at times. In a spot adjacent to a field of broad beans I moored for a coffee break to the sound of church bells from the village of Yelvertoft, a mile distant.

Foxton Locks, with its two staircases of five locks, made a great impression on Rolt as they do to visitors today. He wrote: “When we first sighted the summit lock, the long beams with their white painted ends stood out boldly against the open sky until, on closer approach, a wide expanse of the Leicestershire plain came into view below.”

On my arrival, the top lock cottage – now a tea-room and small museum – was busy with “gongoozlers”. This word, still frequently used by boaters, dates to 1904 and refers to those who visit canals to watch boats.

Rolt mentions the assistance of a one-legged lock-keeper at Foxton Locks. The man – George Durran – is now immortalised in an information board. There is a photograph of George sitting on a lock beam with his crutches. He was lock-keeper between 1929 and 1947. “One of his great-granddaughters was here the other day,” said the volunteer helping me down the locks.

I continued my journey towards Leicester, passing a glamping site adjacent to a lock. I had seen several on my travels but this one – with large brown wigwams – was one of the most impressive. Rolt, with his cargo boat converted to a cosy home, complete with bath and romantic lighting, may have been slightly judgmental that farmers were diversifying into business that relied on the patronage of “townsmen.” He was a rural man at heart.

On their 400-mile journey, Leicester represented a low. In the 1930s, the extensive textile industry made it one of the wealthiest cities in Europe, but the industry came with a downside. Rolt mentions “grimy mills and reeking chimneys”; “reeking gas-works and mountainous refuse dumps”; “black and foul”; water and a lock “full of dead rats”.

Now, most mills have been demolished or turned into apartment blocks. At least one former chimney is a communications mast. Belgrave Lock, then a graveyard for rodents, is as attractive as a Monet painting, surrounded by willows. The water, far from being foul, was filled with marigolds. “We offer flowers to the gods each day. At the end of the week, it’s an insult to the gods to throw the flowers in the bin, so we put them in the river,” smiled Krishna Dinesh, a young Hindu man who was walking the towpath. “I enjoy coming to the river to meditate and feed the ducks,” he added.

Rolt would not have known about Richard III being buried under a car park in Leicester. Then, the history books said the monarch’s remains were thrown in the river Soar, the waterway on which I cruised for two miles between Aylestone Meadows and the city centre. Richard’s last resting place is now a tourist attraction, but in 1939, Rolt visited two other places: the church of Saint Mary de Castro and the market.

The church, near Castle Gardens, was open. It had a rich, musky smell. “That’s hundreds of years of incense and oak,” said a volunteer. He took me to see the north door with its Norman stonework that Rolt remarked upon. Only the arch above the door is Norman, the rest is Victorian, he explained. The spire was removed 10 years ago after it was found to be unsafe. “It’s in a warehouse somewhere waiting to be put back on,” said Dylan Collins, another volunteer. The church, extensively remodelled over the centuries, was once two adjacent buildings – “one for our rich Norman lords and one for us poor people,” said Dylan.

Rolt described Leicester market as “a great square filled with row upon row of booths and a babel of hucksters.” Sadly, the square is now cordoned off, the market roof having been demolished earlier this year. Its future was the talk of the town. “They want to make it all arty-farty and bijou,” said a woman passing by the hoardings. Traders in the temporary market space nearby were asking customers to sign a petition. Yet there was still “a babble of hucksters”.

“Pick your own strawberries! Nice English strawberries. A pound a punnet!” called one. I visited at 3pm on a Saturday and fresh produce was more or less being given away. “Raspberries 50p a bowl!” “Mangoes 50p a bowl!” Laden with carrier bags of fruit and veg, I returned to the boat. After dusk there was the sound of fireworks, but throughout the night I was woken by sirens; a city in celebration and anguish.

The next morning, I cruised on, passing Friar’s Mill, dating from 1794. It is a secure mooring spot, accessible only with a “watermate” key. Leicester has a reputation among boaters for being unsafe unless you moor in one of these locked areas. Boaters had regaled me with stories about vandalism or high jinks, such as having mooring ropes untied. Everyone I encountered, however, was charming: scouts walking along the towpath, litter-pickers, people waving from bridges and taking photos, boys fishing from a bridge, a young woman identifying wildflowers.

One incident was reminiscent of an occasion that Rolt writes about when, from a distance, he “espied several boys of 14 or 15 years of age clamber aboard and walk unconcernedly about the aft deck.” In my case, it was a couple of lads aged about 13. One wore a sandal on one foot and a trainer on the other. They asked if they could have a ride, to which I politely refused. One asked: “Do you have everything inside?”

“No TV,” I replied, truthfully. Later, while I was entering a lock, the pair appeared again. They helped shut the lock gates and then as the boat descended, one sat on the lock chamber wall, reached out with his foot and started to climb onto my boat’s roof. It wasn’t threatening, and done with a rascally smile.

I cruised out of Leicester and was soon back among willows and lakes, moored against a grassy towpath with no key required.