Onto Newbold, and more ice

9th & 10th December

As adumbrated in my last post, we made a flying start yesterday, Sheila getting up at the same time as I rose to make the first thing cup of tea, and boating off whilst I loafed in bed drinking it.

Her reward was a brilliant winter's morning, crisp and clear. Once breakfasted, I took over from her, and we went steadily on through Nuneaton. They have indeed cleared back some of the trees, and there was comparatively little rubbish in the water this time. It may be that we do Nuneaton an injustice, but it's never seemed a particularly attractive place to stop to us.

Sheila resumed control as we left the town, and I went below to take advantage of the fast internet connection. This included checking the weather forecast, which indicated a real risk of more ice last night. In view of this, we decided to carry on to Newbold, thus catching up with our draft cruising plan, and being in a good place to be stuck if iced up for a few days, as seemed all too possible.

I did a chunk more steering in the spell before lunch, and then went below to have mine whilst Sheila reinforced her endurance with a cup of soup. By this time, we 'd come through Hawkesbury Junction, and were heading down the North Oxford. Sheila was particularly pleased with her performance at Sutton's; not only did she make the 180 degree turn without having to use reverse, she didn't touch the throttle at all as Sanity turned under the bridge and into the stop lock.

I gave Tradline a call as we boated along. This generated the classic good news, bad news situation. They will be open on Saturday, assuming we make it to Braunston by the weekend, but they are out of stock of the Victory Black rope, the purchase of which is the entire point of the exercise.

No matter, they have some ordinary 12 mm black polyprop in, so I may well get that instead.

We got to Stretton Stop swing bridge just as Sheila finished making her lunch, but before she'd had a chance to eat it, and to Newbold by 2.15, having boated for just over six hours non-stop.

For the last couple of days, we've been aware of the water pump sounding different, and running at odd moments during the evening. I had a rootle round under the well deck, and found that it had wept a bit, though not dramatically. In any event, in the middle of the day when I was checking it, it seemed fine.

The odd behaviour started up again last night. I suspect that the accumulator, which is supposed to smooth out the demand on the pump, and stop it hunting from time to time, is sticking when it gets cold.

Since we were indeed frozen in again last night, I'm not going to tinker with the system until we are somewhere where we can get more water, and, if necessary, a replacement accumulator.

I set off into Rugby by bus today, with the main task being to call into the T-mobile shop and renegotiate my internet access contract. After a bit of to-ing and fro-ing, (caused by the fact that they were in mid stock take when I first went in, so that I had to go away and come back in half an hour), this I've succeeded in doing.

I'm now paying £15 per month instead of £29, so much more in line with current new contracts for an average user. The guy in the shop reckoned it wasn't worth replacing my E220 modem yet, as T-mobile won't be rolling out the latest high speed service until the latter part of next year and into 2010. When this contract runs out in 18 months time, I may well look at upgrading the modem then.

Ironically, when I got back to the boat, Sheila was cursing the slow speed of the connection here! It wasn't as bad as this last time we were moored here, I'm sure; demand must have increased with the promotion of mobile internet access, so that the local service is struggling.

For this reason, I'm not yet going to respond to a number of kind comments people like Adrian have made recently: I will get round to them, but only when we are in a location where my grey hairs don't get torn out waiting for a glacially slow page to load. I'll be happy just to get this post up tonight.

Nonetheless, all your kind remarks are much appreciated. The hit counter has just gone over the 25,000 mark, so I'm obviously doing something right.

This afternoon we took a short walk round the ex-quarry lake, and then settled into the boat. Sheila is now well on with her crochet order, and I got a copy of the latest Canal Boat whilst killing time in Rugby, so we've got that nice Mr Ludgate's quiz to wrestle with (not to mention the quality journalism, of course, Adam).

The quiz page is a good laugh in itself, in point of fact. They've superimposed a Santa's Little Helper hat on their pic of Martin in his wrg hard hat, with the headline alongside "Martin's Christmas Crackers".

Personally, I think there's an argument that the guy's crackers at other times of the year as well, but the hat certainly doesn't help.

(I jest of course; wrg would be hard put to do without Martin's input, and I promise we'll actually send in our entry for the quiz this year.)

Tomorrow we'll probably still be frozen in; the main question is whether we'll get away before the weekend, but all we can do is wait and see.