We left Foxton at around 7:30. It was rather cloudy but not too cold. We expected to see the two hire boats with the youngsters on moored up around the corner, but they weren’t there. A very pleastant cruise on to Saddlington Tunnel . As we were entering the tunnel we could see that another boat was ahead of us.on reaching Kibworth top lock we realised that the boat we could see was one of the young people’s hire boats. This was there first lock and the was much activity, but not a lot of progress. But they were keen and soon got into the routine of locking. We had expected that they would have a late lie-in, but they said that they were keen to get to Leicester today. We followed them for the first 5 locks, but then they said we could go ahead, so we locked down Newton top lock with one of their boats and ten carried on while they waited for the other one. We continued on our own until Ervin’s lock where we met another boat who had waited for us. We shared the next three locks with them and then we both moored up just above Gees lock .

We had planned another bike ride, but Heddi’s back tyre had another puncture! We pushed it back to the boat and I repaired it on the towpath.

Lovely warm, sunny evening.