Lyra's Travels

Baby it's cold outside

Monday 29th November

We drove down from Leeds on Wednesday and when we got home and started to unload the car I found I had stupidly dropped Damon's keys in our boot!! A quick phone call confirmed that he need them on Friday so we had to drive back on Thursday feeling a bit of an idiot (nothing new there then!). Friday morning dawned bright, very bright, as the sun shone on the covering of snow. We only had about 2 inches of the stuff, but as usual it caused its share of chaos. We decided to drive into Stafford for some necessary supplies and we got on OK but I came across one idiot trying to drive off our marina and have a great deal of trouble, skidding all over place and failing to get the car to go straight. As he came towards me I pulled over to give him room to pass and the source of his trouble was quickly apparent, he was driving with the hand brake on! I stopped him and pointed out his problem giving the poor guy a big red face.

Saturday night the temperature dropped to -7.5 on our outside thermometer and the central heating is burning through the fuel at a great rate of knots.

I went out Sunday morning and took some pics of our winter wonderland. About the only problems we are expecting to have are the usual ones of boats on canals at this time of year, frozen water taps so that we can't top up our fresh water tank and frozen water stopping us from moving when we want to. Hopefully we will be able to move within the marina to get to the slipway week after next, but more importantly we definitely don't want it frozen for when our new blacking has been done. We made that mistake 3 years ago and had to have the blacking re-done a few months later because of the damage done by the ice.

This morning I walked up into the village for a date with the local quack which at least got me some exercise. The main roads are still clear here but the marina road is a sheet of ice and great fun. Still no a water is flowing in the taps and the marina have got some drums available to carry water to your boat should people run out. Not looking forward to that.