Foxton & Market Harborough

10-11 Day Cruise

All boats can be booked for 10 day hire from Friday or Saturday through to Monday or Tuesday week or 11 day hire from Monday or Tuesday to Friday or Saturday week.

Hours cruising each way to:
Market Harborough: 32 hrs*
72 miles, 21 wide locks, 17 narrow locks, 2 aqueducts, 3 tunnels.
Welford: 24 hrs*each way

* These are approximate hours and do not account for possible delays.

Travel north along the Ouzel Valley through the parks of Milton Keynes and over the Aqueducts at Wolverton and Cosgrove and then on to the picturesque Northamptonshire village of Stoke Bruerne. Take your boat up through the flight of seven locks and on through the nearly two mile long Blisworth Tunnel and on to Gayton Junction.

Continue on through Northamptonshire and its attractive stone villages to Weedon, reputed to be the centre of England. Up the Buckby flight of seven locks to Norton Junction and turn right onto the Leicester section of the Grand Union Canal.

Cross the embankment and through the woods to the locks at Watford Gap. Here you will come across your first staircase locks where the bottom gates of one lock form the top gates of the next. After Watford Gap there is the twenty mile lock free pound across the summit to Foxton, which includes the Crick and Husbands Bosworth tunnels.

At Foxton are the remains of the old steam-driven inclined plane. The old engine house is now an excellent museum illustrating how the steam-driven plane was built and worked. You can see where the old incline plane lift used to operate.

At the bottom of the locks you turn right along the 5 mile lock free Market Harborough Arm, which terminates at the Market Harborough Canal Basin just a short distance from the town centre.

Well worth a side trip is the Welford Arm, at just over a mile long, this section follows the River Avon with lovely views of the Northamptonshire countryside. At the end of the arm, there are two marinas and the Wharf Inn pub. The village of Welford is a short walk from the canal and has a post office and grocery shop.

Foxton & Market Harborough Canals Route Map
Canal & River Holiday Cruises Map Key

Hours cruising each way to:

Market Harborough: 32 hrs*
72 miles, 21 wide locks, 17 narrow locks, 2 aqueducts, 3 tunnels.
Welford: 24 hrs*each way

* These are approximate hours and do not account for possible delays.