Foxton Workshops

 Chrys Allen and I arrived at Foxton and what a fantastic site, the locks the mechanics of the incline lift,
the wonderful folk in the canal museum.  Mechanics became our prime interest after the site visit so a trip to Market Harborough for materials, and what bounty was found.  The afternoon was spent playing with our newly found goodies to see how the workshop would work.  We didn't want to stop, but stop we must, a meeting with Alison Lloyd re her walking workshops next week and beyond. Grab some food in the local pub and then 25 explorer scouts arrive.  Okay there isn't enough room in the museum so some adhoc thinking and we split the groups into 5's  I take one out into the night, more of that later.
Chrys works with the other groups working with mechanics and engineering to make machines that will move something from A - B above and below are the results, it looks to me as if they all did magnificently.

 Back to the other group.  So I took them outside into the cold and the drizzle with concertina'd paper and pencils and their ears.  The idea was for them to walk the 10 locks and listen to the sound each makes as the differing pattern of water is let through the gates, I also recorded the sounds of the water as we walked up the locks.  The scouts had to listen and draw on the paper the sounds they heard, interpreting the sounds with marks, they did extremely well and I will be putting the sounds I recorded with the marks they drew together in some av form or another.

 So that started our workshops off.  What a great start and what a fabulous site, thanks to Cargoes and all who now sail this journey.

A big thanks to Mike at the canal museum who also gave me some brilliant recordings, more of that later, and to Debbie and the explorer scouts.

Off and running ..

michael