We woke
up on Saturday morning to a hard frost; we even had ice covering the inside of
our windows. Soon understood why – the stove
had gone out overnight. We are on a new type of coal which is meant to be really hot burning producing little ash. The trouble is I haven’t managed to get the
stove settings right for it yet. There
are different optimal settings for each type of coal and it takes a few days trial and error to sus them out.
It looked
like a lovely day as the sun was coming through the windows but looking outside we
could see that the canal was lightly iced over.
This was a real surprise as previous experience has shown us that it
takes a few days of frost before that starts happening. The difference here is that the Ashby is very
still, has no locks and does not appear to flow whereas we have always been on canals with a
flow or lots of locks so they take longer to freeze over.
We
decided to cruise to Hinckley (the only town on the Ashby canal) as friends are
joining us for Sunday lunch and we need to be somewhere easily accessible for
them. The Ashby canal goes through some
lovely Leicestershire countryside.
Here are
Karen and Buddy sunning themselves whilst waiting for me to pick them up.
When we
passed this ‘park’ home I wondered if I would have been fired for taking the
picture if I was still working.
The canal is quite narrow in places so it makes you go really slowlly which adds to the tranquility of it all.
Anyway
the good news for the day was that I seem to have got the stove settings right for
the new coal. The boat feels hotter than
we have ever had it in the winter before and we are sitting here with red
faces. Mind you that’s probably as a
result of being outside all day and the mulled wine – well it is Saturday after
all.
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