Day Seventeen

Thursday 4 February 2010 – Loughborough to Shardlow.

A grey, dank day. As my train drew into Loughborough station, it was drizzling. I popped into the gents, changed into my waterproofs and emerged just as the rain stopped. There were no more than a few spots all day.

I could have picked up the Soar Navigation towpath immediately, but the journey would be no longer through the town centre, so I went for a look. Loughborough is a solid sort of place. Market Harborough, the first place I walked through in Leicestershire, is definitely a “county” town, but Loughborough, the last, is distinctly urban, more midlands-industrial than goods-to-market. The church is handsome but not exciting, and the shopping streets are either pedestrianised or choked with traffic. Heading North, I reached the modest canal basin, and soon I was back on the towpath.

A graceful willow adorned an otherwise graceless trading estate on the outskirts of town. Soon I was in fields, flat and featureless. I climbed no hills all day, the flood plain of the Soar merging with that of the Trent. Interest came from the man-made rather than the natural. The Soar itself was interesting for what had been done to it. A board by one of the locks informed me that the canalisation of the waterways linking Erewash pit to Leicestershire had halved the price of coal in Loughborough. Signs warned boaters not to proceed if the water rose above a certain level – it was very close to the danger point.

Ahead, the roar of a jet engine came from East Midlands Airport, while behind me an amplified announcement reduced to a murmur by distance came from a clump of factories. At Normanton on Soar, a very fine church and a succession of “des res”s line the bank opposite the towpath. A few hundred yards on, the path follows the Zouch Cut past the eponymous village, while the river crashes over a weir to pass the other side of the village. River and canal were soon reunited, running North to Kegworth, which lies beneath the flight path for East Midlands Airport. In 1989, a Boeing 737 flew over Kegworth, fell short of the airport and crashed into the embankment of the M1 motorway. Miraculously no vehicles on the road were near the crash site, but 47 people died on the plane.

I lunched in a friendly pub on the outskirts of Kegworth which had two other customers and – unsurprisingly – a board outside offering to let the business. A pity; I liked it. They laughed at the idea that they might object to my muddy boots – “We’ve got a cleaner!”

There is a break in the walkable towpath North of Kegworth, but I didn’t care, as I was intent on cutting the corner between the Soar and the Trent, and then on to the Derwent. I joined the Midshires Way, which took me by path, bridleway and lanes to the banks of the Trent. The elephant in this particular room is Ratcliffe Power Station. Its forest of chimneys and cooling towers, their steam merging with the natural murk, dominated the dead flat landscape. Last year demonstrators tried unsuccessfully to close the power station on environmental grounds.

At Sawley, I skirted a large marina to head West along the bank of the Trent. The direct route to Shardlow whould have been straight on along the Trent & Mersey Canal, but a key bridge had been demolished and, while a lot of squabbling goes on about its replacement, this non-swimmer followed the meanders of the river to Shardlow, once a major inland port and still a boaty sort of place.