London to the Lakes on NCN6: Day 3 – Foxton Leicester Derby, Nottingham

This was a ride through pleasant but unspectacular, gentle countryside interspersed with large industrial cities and their suburbs. I feel I should apologize for the length of the video – it’s quite hard to decide what to leave out and, anyway, I felt it should all be there! There were so many bits of path to record and I didn’t include them all!

The highlights of the ride were to be Foxton Locks and the Cloud Trail. I was interested to see how Sustrans had negotiated the cities of Leicester, Derby and Nottingham (which was familiar but a slightly different route to my normal) with a cycle route, and I was hopeful that I might see something worthwhile in the area north of Leicester where I had, long ago, spent 6 wonderful days hiking in Charnwood Forest – which Route 6 sadly misses out.

I had an early start – cooking breakfast in a (too) tiny frying pan I had wanted to try out.

Foxton Locks was fascinating. The staircase locks are unusual and the site is very nicely kept. It is an “Apparent Staircase” according to Wikipedia, because it has pounds beside (but effectively in between) the locks for storing water. The remains of the inclined plane fascinated me – trying to work it all out with the help of the few signs (the museum wasn’t open yet). Sorry if I’ve bored you with it in the video! The water consumption for a lock transit came from a Canal And Rivers Trust website; 25,000 gallons seems a lot – imagine how many days tap-water that would be for a family! Last summer many restored canals suffered drought restrictions – not least because their original reservoirs had been sold off to the drinking water companies.

The “Old Grand Union” canal which crossed relatively high ground was already called the “Grand Union” long before the later and much bigger Grand Union was formed. The inclined plane was part of an upgrade to increase the OGU canal’s capacity but the plan included widening of the locks at the Watford end too and that didn’t happen so traffic remained low, the incline was not used to capacity and the existing locks (which had been kept for night-time use by new-fangled motor barges) were cheaper to run.

The railway path into Leicester, reached by a tortuous series of paths and backstreets was familiar to me from a hosteling trip I had done a few weeks before (hopefully there may be another SLOTHO series to come from the footage). The exit through the park and water meadows to the North was a pleasant surprise.

Alas, the ride through Quorn to Loughborough was frustrating, disappointing and a bit scary! My safety relied, at times, on the driver behind being alert and well behaved as most, but not all, are. These were like cycle paths used to be when nobody really believed they should be there – except perhaps to keep the “bloody cyclists” out of the way of proper road users’ in cars! The roadside cycle lanes were very narrow in places, much less than the 1m from the kerb that I should be riding for safety according to modern analysis of accidents. I mean no criticism of the towns here – but that bit of the cycle route is not one I want to ride again!

I can’t find any maps of cycle routes crossing Charnwood Forest – Leicestershire County Council needs to wake up to the possibilities because there is some fantastic scenery I didn’t get to visit. For a touring cyclist it would be much more worthwhile than the awful route that NCN6 follows! A properly planned route might also give e-mtbs from the nearby towns something to do that wouldn’t damage the considerable natural beauty of the parks and reserves.

That, and not seeing Cloud Quarry were my disappointments of the day. Cloud Quarry has eaten half a hill, so there must be something of a view! I don’t know if those steps I saw were a viewpoint – I rode past assuming it was just a footpath! The rest of the Cloud Trail was very pleasant but unspectacular apart from Trent Viaduct which you’d see better if you weren’t on it!

I included the largely familiar section to Nottingham in the video for completeness – a lot of the adventure today had been about crossing similar urban areas. Route 6 turns north a little way before I joined the Beeston Canal. That route north will be in the next video I plan to edit (hopefully). I spent only a few days at home before returning to continue the tour!

The ride was pleasant overall. Urban cycle paths twist and turn and stop and start a lot, which is tiring and slow but there were lots of places where lovely paths had been created and a lot of the credit for that must go to the hard work of SUSTRANS. I’d happily ride this again – but I’d avoid the bit near Quorn and try going over the hills instead, or maybe I’d take the other NCN routes: 52 and 63 via Coalville although that would miss out Abbey Park and Watermead Park.

Thanks for watching. I hope you enjoyed it! Did you count the NCN signposts (only the arty ones)? I used to hate them, but now they are like old friends!

[Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Heat. Hey, heat. Hey, heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Hey, hey, hey. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] There we go. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. N. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Hey. [Music] [Music] Heat. Hey, heat. Hey, heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Applause] Heat. [Applause] [Music] Heat. [Applause] [Music]