There are ten locks at Foxton, climbing the hillside in two staircases of five, and on a summer afternoon you can stand at the bottom and watch narrowboats queue like traffic on a motorway slip road. It takes about forty-five minutes to get through. Most of the spectators have an ice cream from Top Lock Cottage. Some have a pint.
The two pubs at the bottom of the locks are different propositions. The Foxton Locks Inn, rebuilt in 2005 from the old canal company offices, is the food-orientated one — Sunday carvery, Leicestershire Tourism Award winner, a garden that holds hundreds. They keep Timothy Taylor Landlord and Caledonian Deuchars IPA, with two rotating guests and a Cask Marque accreditation. Dogs get free treats at the door.
Bridge 61, next door, is smaller and more traditional. There's a snug with a serving hatch, an open fire, and canal artefacts on the walls. The real ales lean local — Adnams Southwold Bitter as a regular, often something from Langton Brewery as a guest. They do a build-your-own breakfast from half nine, evening meals on Fridays only, and they're open every day of the year. In summer you can use the garden BBQ for free and watch boats pass.
Up in the village itself, the Shoulder of Mutton on Main Street is an inn with rooms — six ensuite, mini fridge, full English. It started as a farmhouse, became an inn in 1770, closed for about five years, and reopened in December 2022 with pictures of bygone Foxton on the walls and Eady & Dulley brewery memorabilia. The rural lunch is good value: three courses for £16.95 on a Wednesday to Friday. Sunday roasts are highly rated. They rotate through Woodforde's Wherry, Greene King Abbot, Sharp's Doom Bar, and Timothy Taylor Landlord, with something from Langton Brewery often appearing as the changing ale.
The New Black Horse, also on Main Street, was rebuilt in 1900 and relaunched in 2025 after passing through Lichfield Brewery, Ind Coope, Marstons, and Greene King. The beer garden has commanding views over the village and countryside. Wednesday and Thursday are burger and pie nights, with pies from eight pounds.
Four pubs for a village three miles from Market Harborough. The canal helps.
That canal is the reason most people come. The lock flight — the largest staircase on the English canal system — lifts boats seventy-five feet through a valley in the rolling Leicestershire countryside. Benjamin Bevan designed them; they opened on the first of October 1813. Next to the locks, the earthworks of the Inclined Plane are still visible. Built in 1900, it used two balanced water-holding caissons on rails to carry narrowboats up in twelve minutes instead of an hour and a quarter. A twenty-five-horsepower steam engine did the work. It ran for ten years, was mothballed in 1911, dismantled in 1926, and sold for scrap in 1928 for two hundred and fifty pounds. The Foxton Canal Museum, in the reconstructed boilerhouse, tells the story properly.
Walking is easy here. A three-kilometre circular takes you round the locks, museum, and Inclined Plane remains in under an hour. The towpath runs south to Market Harborough or north along the Leicester line. The Leicestershire Round passes through, linking to Saddington Reservoir.
St Andrew's, the parish church, is the oldest building here — built around 1200, with a fragment of Anglo-Saxon stonework in the south aisle and a clock from about 1680 with a wooden frame and iron cogs. The Domesday surveyors found eighteen villagers, five slaves, one female slave, a priest, and valued the whole place at four pounds.
Market Harborough station is three miles away. East Midlands Railway will get you to London St Pancras in an hour or Leicester in sixteen minutes. The Centrebus LC10 runs through the village roughly every two hours. Parking at the locks costs three to five pounds, or nothing after half past five.
At Top Lock Cottage, at the top of the flight, there's a pre-loved bookshop and a cafe selling locally made ice cream. You can hire a day boat at the locks. Over four hundred thousand people visit a year, which is a lot of people watching water go downhill.
