Baby, it's cold outside

19th & 20th December

The last couple of days have been an exercise in dealing with the cold weather. It’s been getting barely above freezing during the day, and seriously cold overnight, with temperatures around -6º C. It’s in conditions like this that we become concerned for the well being of the water pump under the well deck, just forward of the hatch behind the cabin steps.

Although, to our knowledge, we’ve never had one freeze, it seems sensible to take precautions. Last thing at night, I unfasten the steps and swing them round, and remove the hatch cover, leaning it against the steps. This means that warmth from the Squirrel stove, which we aim to keep in overnight, is reflected onto the pump and the pipework which runs along the aft side of the water tank.

The ice on the cut is getting quite thick, so we are taking care to manage our water supply in the hopes of it lasting until we are able to get out to the water point again. As a result of the continuing cold spell, which is forecast to last right up to Christmas, we have reluctantly decided that it would be foolish to try to go over to Lincoln for the day on Christmas Eve.

The pleasure of the trip would be spoiled by our anxiety about getting home, and about the boat surviving the day without us there. People who leave their boats in the winter normally take some steps to protect them from the effects of frost, but that’s not practical for us in our present circumstances.

This morning we woke to find there had been a serious fall of snow overnight and the ducks were staggering and slipping around in it on top of the frozen water. Both yesterday and today we had had the entertainment of throwing out lumps of stale bread to them. There then follows a sort of ducky ice hockey, wherein one bird will grab a piece of bread and slither off with it, desperately trying to break a piece off before the rest of the pack lands on him or her and it goes flying.

The plan today was for a visit by Peter and Jan to share soup and sandwiches with us and exchange Christmas presents. We therefore made a prompt start, first of all cleaning the boat and then making the soup and rolls.

I had made a start on preparing chicken stock yesterday by boiling the dismembered carcass of a chicken with some herbs, onion, celery and carrot. This morning I fished the corpse out and stripped the remaining meat off it, and then liquidized the veg with my Bamix wand. I then put the pan back on the stove and added chopped leeks and an onion and boiled it all up thoroughly.

Meanwhile, Sheila made two sets of bread dough from those handy kits, one for granary mini baguettes and the other for parmesan and sun dried tomato rolls. No sooner had we got these set to rise than the phone rang; we were not entirely surprised to hear Peter announce that the road conditions around Knutsford were too bad for them to make the journey.

We have to hope that they will be able to get across on Christmas Eve, otherwise the present exchange will have to wait for the warmer weather tentatively forecast for the last week of the year. Meanwhile, we have had a quiet day sitting snugly in the boat whilst the snow drifted down outside.

After lunch we used the excuse of taking two bags of rubbish to the skip to make a foray into the wintery scene. We were by no means the craziest people in view; a group of anglers were just finishing a competition match as we did so. They had had to break holes in the ice in order to dangle their bait in the chilly water.

We also saw the coal boat Alton trying to get their pump out machine working. I don’t think they were successful in this, which may be a problem for those boats around here who were counting on them, as the Trading Post machine is presumably still out of action.

Alton finally crunched her way off up the canal; even the powerful Town Class motor was having difficulty, frequently having to go astern to get another run at the ice.

It’s been showing some signs of a thaw in the late afternoon, but I doubt if the ice will clear sufficiently for us to do the tow for Braidbar which is scheduled for tomorrow. We will probably plod down to Poynton instead as we have a parcel to post, the DVD player having sold on eBay.