Tag Archives: Luton Town

Tuesday 8 April – Heartbreak and Harecastle

Easter 2025, , , , , , , ,

Distance travelled: 10 miles (by boat from Railway Bridge No 151A to Westport Lake Visitor Moorings)

Route map showing a travel path between two locations, with labeled towns and roads. A blue line indicates the main route through a rural area, emphasizing waypoints along the journey.
All our canal route planning came from CanalPlan

Locks: 24. Total so far: 31

We got up super early. The canal was full of birds singing. Not like at home in Croydon. This really was proper countryside.

Today was a lock day. Loads of them. So many that this bit of canal gets called “Heartbreak Hill”. We did 24 locks before lunchtime! TWENTY FOUR! Plus the two we’d done the night before. I really wanted to join in and I began to learn how to use a windlass to open a paddle and let the water in and out.

We had to get to Harecastle Tunnel for our booked slot but then my Dad was like “Oh no, I actually didn’t book it”. Oops. So we had to try and rush a bit to get there (not an easy thing to do in a canal boat) and hope they’d let us through. And they did! Thank you Canal and River Trust, you saved my Dad’s bacon.

The tunnel is MASSIVE. It’s 1.6 miles long. That’s as long as walking from my house to school to my house, to school, to my house and back to school again! It took 45 minutes to get through and was pitch black inside (apart from our headlight). I was on edge the whole time because it was a bit spooky but also exciting.

There used to be two tunnels here – one built by a guy called James Brindley, and the other by Thomas Telford which was completed almost exactly 200 years ago. Only Telford’s is in use today. In the old days, people had to lie on the boat and leg it through by pushing on the tunnel walls with their feet. For THREE HOURS. I would definitely not like that.

Four children wearing bright orange life jackets pose for a photo on a canal boat, smiling and making peace signs. The entrance to Harecastle Tunnel is visible in the background, surrounded by trees and sunlight.

After we came out the other side, we moored up at Westport Lake. This place was originally created as a ‘pleasure gardens’ during Queen Victoria’s reign but over time it got neglected and became a wasteland. There was a playground which was really fun and we got treated to ice creams!

Then my Dad and Dave went to watch Stoke City v Luton (it was a 1-1 draw). The rest of us watched Series 8, Episode 7 of the Great Pottery Throwdown where the contestants made bird baths in honour of the Six Towns.

My favourite was Steve’s – and the judges agreed (sorry for the spoiler).