Volunteers doing their best at Foxton

I TOO was attempting to get up the Foxton  Flight on that week-end of the festival there, and it was a shambles, writes Kelvin Townsend.

As part of the festival it seems the organisers were locking traditional boats and their butties up and down the flight to entertain the visitors, and it was entertainment as at one time the locks seemed full of them with the men pulling their butties into locks where they were not supposed to, and it was easy to see why the locks were closed to normal traffic.

Would have sorted it

The volunteers were doing the best they could but just did not have the authority to put those on the boats in order, it is at times like these that you realise that on such as the Foxton Flight with the operation of side ponds, it needs a real lock keeper, someone like Crystal in the old days, she would have had them sorted in a jiffy.

The boater who was promised a slot but was disappointed as the volunteers had gone home, was not alone, I too was waiting for hours, but at least not overnight.

As an afterthought, I can't see the interest in traditional boats and their butties, they are virtually all the same and really there is nothing to see.