A cold old start.

Brrrrr the temperature got down to –5.7 C over night and so we woke up to a very heavy frost on top of a sprinkling of snow.

Despite being cold, it was sunny and an amazing blue sky. The birds were singing and the Canada Geese were honking loud enough to wake the neighbourhood. Paddy enjoyed his walk up the towpath, there was a definite spring in his step. I love mornings like this, it really does not get any better than a cold crisp morning, where you have the chill on your face and the warm of the sun on your back.

The canal was frozen in places, but where we are moored there is so much moving water the canal stayed ice free.

Back on the boat, the fires were stoked up, mog and dog were fed and so were Keith and I. The generator went on at 9am, we do not like starting it up to early when we are in a built up area, even though the generator is built into the engine room, so no where near as loud as the ones you see on the bankside. It is all a matter of courtesy to others, which is what I wish another boater had last night, when he fired up his engine at 9pm. I did not hear when it went off because I was asleep. Sadly some do not stick to the engines and generators off at 8pm. Batteries charged after an hour, we then locked the boat up and went back to Argos with the cold box we had bought yesterday. Why? Well it had been running all afternoon and night and the food was still not cold. The lid moved and therefore it was leaking the cold air, so we took it back and got a refund. We then went walk about, finding Dunelm where I bought a couple of cushion covers, it was then back to Homebase to buy two new Carbon Monoxide Alarms.

You are supposed to renew them after five years and we have had ours five years. Not only that one of them was showing a fault light. A twin pack cost us £37.99 which is an absolute bargain, when you consider it can save your life. We bought the twin pack because we have one in the back cabin and the other in the saloon, so double safety. We also came away with three more heavy duty storage boxes for the hold. They were on offer instead of £19.99 each they were down to £13.99 each so it made sense to get some more. The job of filling them will happen when we are in dry dock, I can spend the evenings sorting through our old boxes.

Back on the boat, I fixed us some lunch and then Keith put the new alarms up, no point having them and not putting them up. Because they are the same as our old ones, the screw holes were the same. I then got on with getting some coal in from the hold ready for another chilly night.

Today has been wonderful weather wise, the solar panel has been soaking up the sun and I have been very chilled out.