Catherine
left for work at 8 on Thursday morning and as she was coming back to see us on
Friday evening we had no plans to move or, at least, not very far. We walked along the canal until the other side
of Loughborough but saw no better mooring spots than the one we had. We then walked into the town to have a look
around. On the way we crossed an old
railway siding that is now full of steam and diesel engines in different stages
of restoration. This railway was part of the Grand Central railway which was one of the many axed by Beeching in the 1960s (for those of us who can remember!). Beeching was the chairman of the British Transport Commission and his report into the restructuring of the railways led to the loss of about half our stations and over a quarter of lines.
The Grand Central Steam Railway society uses this as their depot and run regular tourist trips on the steam trains.
Loughborough is the home of the largest bell foundry in the world and they have made the bells for landmarks like York Minster and St Paul's. The canal
through Loughborough has a mixture of old and new housing.
This old mill
has been converted to flats…
…and this one
is now derelict. We could just make out
that it used to be the Herbert Morris factory, a fairly well known company that
used to make cranes, gantries and suchlike.
The
navigation through Loughborough is a canal but it rejoins the River Soar the
other side again. We have noticed that
stanking planks are not used but stop lock gates are found at most bridges when
a section needs to be closed off and drained.
We visited
the town centre and the market where we stocked up on fruit and veg. On
the way back to the boat we passed the basin which was full of boats unlike
yesterday when there was only one.
We spent the
rest of the day doing chores and then watched the rugby in the evening.
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