A warm weekend in the ice

When we arrived at our moorings on Friday for a weekend aboard Herbie, we bumped into our boating neighbour Lydia. Now, we have a standing joke with her that every time we take Herbie out we get terrible weather. Well this time I knew it was going to be fine and dry all weekend so I smiled and looked smug and said "This time it's going to be perfect for boating." Little did I know . . .

Saturday moring dawned bright and fair and after a leisurely breakfast we slipped our moorings and set off down the canal towards the winding hole. Two minutes later we came to the ice. - all over the canal. The ice was only about 5mm thick so we pushed on making a horrendous cracking and crunching noise as we went. I suspect that Herbie now has no blacking left on the waterline. Never mind she has to be reblacked this year anyway.

We pressed on through it for the mile or so down to the turn and then back up to where we started with me at the front breaking the ice with a pole and Kath at the tiller. At that point we decide not to head on out to the main canal in case the ice got worse, because we knew it was going to be colder still that night. So although the weather was beautiful, the conditions certainly weren't perfect for boating as I had said the previous day.

Nevertheless we had a nice weekend on the boat and despite the icy conditions the boat was cosy and warm. Sunday was indeed much icier as you can see from this picture taken from Herbie. Someone further down the canal was attempting to get out without much success. We went for a walk in the sun and met a boater braver than us just ploughing through the stuff and making quite a racket. Here he is (on this blog's first ever video!!!!!).