God it's Cold

We had the fire going all last night and to be fair it was a bit hot to sleep comfortably as we like to sleep cold, but we did want to wake up in the morning. Well we never got any ice, good news, but it was so dam cold, but we had no rain or snow, so we decided to move on. With about five layers on we set off and it felt like the canal was on the border of freezing up. We then spotted a cow stuck on the towpath and made a call to the local farmer to let him know. Hopefully that cow will have a nice Christmas.

We were being followed by this Kingfisher for about a mile and in the end he thought he would have his photo taken. Shame we still only have the back up camera. We then got to the bottom of the Buckby flight of locks and thought we would top up everything before the cold snap at Whilton. With Diesel at 65p a litre and self declaration and a pumpout at £12.00 we felt quite smug with ourselves that we can deal with anything now. We used the chandlery and picked up the oil and filters for the main service soon required. They were a bit expensive, so we will be looking for some cheaper options, now we know what to look for.

The locks at Buckby were very difficult to operate and leaking quite bad, a surprise due to the fact they drained them last year and spent a lot of time fixing the paddles and gates. We did pass another boat coming down and they were an older couple who couldn't shut some of the gates. This was handy for us as we could go straight into the locks, but we could see the problem because it took both of us to close one of the gates. It had started to rain with a bit of sleet in it so when we got to the top we moored up and got water. We were so cold at this point we didn't want to move again, we couldn't feel our fingers or our cheek bones. Derwent6 didn't let us down though, it was very warm and toasty inside and with Christmas songs playing in the background and that warming feeling it made us feel very Christmassy. A Shepards pie warmed our tummys and we soon fell asleep all cosy and warm. We just looked outside and the snow is coming down....Ummmm shall we move tomorrow!!!!!