Two more days at Drayton, then away!

18th & 19th February

My, but that was a cold night! We were indeed iced in on Monday morning, although there were open patches of water about as well.

There was also a lot of ice on the inside of the Houdini, which became a bit of a problem, as we'd set the Eberspacher to come on automatically (saves me hopping shivering out of bed to push the button). As we lay there. listening to the welcome roar, the ice started to melt and drip onto the bed.

We keep an old cycle cape to cover the bed under these circs (ex free gift from RCR the other year – useless as a cycle cape, but great for this purpose, and for using as a hairdresser's cape when cutting hair) so I had to pop out of bed anyway. Once out, I went through and relit the Squirrel and made a cup of tea.

Once actually up and about (some time later) we had breakfast and did yet another shopping trip before lunch. Regular readers must wonder why so much shopping at the moment. The thing is that once we leave here, we're going to wander down the rest of the Shroppie – Norbury Junction, Gnosall, Wheaton Aston, through to Brewood when the stoppage comes off at WA – and there are no further serious shopping opportunities.

We'll use local stores as usual for milk and the like, but anything more than that is out of the question. Then we're going down to Kinver, before backtracking to Great Haywood, so the next town of any size will be Rugeley in about three weeks time.

After lunch we went through onto the water point, filled right up, and then winded with care. There was ice still in the winding hole, and a couple of cruisers, one GRP, one wood, at the far end, and I didn't want to shove sharp edged sheets of ice into their delicate sides.

The task was made a little more interesting by Blue Crystal, who'd chosen to spend the night moored across the end of the hole, on a mooring clearly marked "Water Point only". No excuse, really – there's loads of room at Drayton at the moment.

After these exertions, we went back onto the mooring through the bridge for one last night (hopefully) and had a quiet afternoon.

Today was cold, misty and murky at the start, but strangely the cut was free of ice. We went into town yet again, and had a really successful last session. The post we needed had turned up at the PO, and we found things like more thermal socks (Seconds Ahead), secondary double glazing film to experiment with next year (Homebase) and even creamed coconut block (not in Morrisons or Lidl, but 50p, would you believe, in a little independent health food store).

Back at the boat, Sheila dealt with the finance stuff while I made a coffee, and then I shot into town to post the result (of the finance stuff, not the coffee).

Then we had a quick lunch, and by one o'clock we were off again, heading up Tyrley Locks. As we approached, an OwnerShips boat, Inglewood, came down, so we had the flight with us all the way. This meant it was just two o'clock when we got to the top, so we came on through Woodseaves cutting on a glorious winter's afternoon.

There were serious icicles hanging down the rock side in places, and the sun struck through the branches of the overhanging trees in spectacular style.

Moored at Goldstone Wharf, we had a cup of tea whilst I wrestled with the internet connection. It's not good here, and prone to cause strange glitches in Mail and Firefox. On one occasion nothing would do but to do a cold reboot, i.e. shut it all down and start again from scratch. As a Mac user, I'm not used to having to resort to such drastic measures – it quite reminds me of my Windows days :-}

Tomorrow we'll probably move on to Norbury Junction for a couple of days, then to Gnosall for the weekend.