Fully Loaded

After some heavy rain we thought we would have seen the end of the ice for the time being, but we could still see it in the distance and no boats had passed us for weeks. As we were uncomfortable with being on the lock moorings and water point here, we knew we had to move as soon as possible. We were both feeling a bit better this morning, so Al first walked into town and got some last minutes bits to refill the cupboards but reported that the ice was still bad.

We decided to leave at about 11.30am, as the weather didn't look very good for the rest of the week, and make our way to Alvecote marina. The ice was still two inches thick and had only just been broken by the BW boat that passed us yesterday (he never got very far). It was very patchy with long clear sections and sections packed with ice but we just took it steady and got through to the marina.

We moored up and asked for a full house...fill with diesel, pumpout, a gas bottle and three bags of coal. You would have thought with that lot we would have got a free valet.....

We then got going again and were soon breaking ice.... but it wasn't long before we spotted a few trees down in the nearby woods. We pulled over and got out the chainsaw and added half a tree to the extra weight we had just put on. It will be good to be back on wood, but it also shows how important it is to have some coal on board, you never know! With a very heavy Derwent6 we carved through the ice with ease as we went through Polesworth. We were also very shocked to pass two other boats, blimey movement!!

After a hour and a half cruising we moored up at one of our favourite spots, in the middle of no where. It felt good to be on our own........

We have a good 3G and telly signal so after dinner we settled down to the football in the evening.