We woke to a heavy frost and a frozen canal.
We were underway just after 9am, once we'd managed to break enough ice to get away from the bank. For the first hour or so we were ice-breaking. It wasn't very think, but pushing a way through makes a lot of noise, and it made getting round some of the Oxford Canal's notoriously tight bends quite difficult. Later, we were able to follow the tracks of another boat which had already done the hard work. As the morning wore on, the mist lifted, the sun came out, and it was a beautiful day.
Then at Fenny Compton the weather changed. As we went through the narrows, we found ourselves in fog and the temperature dropped. We passed a couple of other boats, including one with a helmsman dressed in shorts! We stopped for lunch just above the Claydon flight, and while we were stationary the sun burned away the fog. In the afternoon, we tackled the locks. There was still frost on the balance beams, and ice on the ground.
We moored for the night on the straight section below the locks. It wasn't yet half past three, but the light was soon fading. We watched a DVD, and ate on board.
12 miles, 5 locks. (18, 17)
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1 comment:
Hi Adam - glad you are (were) under way and blogging again. I was trying to thick of something witty to say about the thinkness of the ice you encountered ... but, as you can see, I couldn't. Bumped into a colleague of yours - Tony - in a pub in Greenwich on Boxing Day (I was up visiting my brother).
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