Nantwich Embankment

It’s continued to be cold here in Nantwich, so we have mostly been tucked up inside Oleanna keeping warm. Watching the news and seeing what has been happening around the country makes us feel like we’ve missed all the fun. Huge amounts of snow and snow drifts have missed us, the snow having been deposited before it reached our part of the country. We’ve had a few feeble flutterings of snow and the most that has hung around has been an inch in the shadows.

The wind has been freezing and gusty, but I’m glad we didn’t get the foam (link) that engulfed Foreshore Road in Scarborough. Seeing images of the high waves crashing over the harbour walls and flooding along the seafront (link) along with tales of friends battling their way home from work across Yorkshire have made us feel very lucky to have been where we are, only have a bit of ice to contend with. Boaters up and down the country have been iced in to a greater extent than us. NB Alton, the coal boat on the Macclesfield, has had to postpone their usual fortnightly run as the ice on the Macc was just far too thick at 3 inches for them to break through, so they are delivering by road to keep people going until they can reach them by water again. Even parts of the Llangollen have frozen over.

The ice alongside Oleanna on Friday was well and truly broken up by a hire boat heading back to Norbury Junction. First I knew of it was when huge rumbling noises made me look out of the window to see the large sheet of ice, that had been knocking at our hull all night, zoom past! It was nice when they decided to slow their pace just after they’d passed us! With the ice now broken up that bit more another boat reversed to the water point where they seemed to vanish. Maybe they were sunk by an iceberg? Or reversed into the Nantwich Triangle never to be seen again! Who knows, but they certainly didn’t return in our direction.

With the temperatures starting to rise the likelihood of the cut freezing over again was slim so we decided to treat ourselves to showers on board, the tank was still above three quarters full, so we could risk it. It was nice to be clean again without having had to swill down the showers across the way.

Saturday morning arrived and we woke to the canal seemingly having returned to water. Ice was still congregated by the bridge behind us, but this was far enough away to be safe for Tilly to go out. I’d already come to the same conclusion hours before hand, they were so slow at opening up those doors for me!  Tilly made the most of gaps between woofers running around like a total loon, pouncing on none existent friends, leaping into the air and scurrying up and down the embankment. At least all this activity kept her warm!

Late morning we had a tap on the roof, Jaq from NB Valerie. We had a lovely couple of hours chatting about our cruising lives. This lady smelt quite nice, so I offered my photographic skills to take a picture of them all from my shelf. Came out quite well.

Over the last four years (almost) we have crossed bows with plenty of bloggers, NB Valerie several times. But usually we’ve been on a bit of a mission, heading somewhere, trying to keep up the cruising hours to reach our next destination for someone’s birthday or a booked passage, so we’ve not often had chance to stop and spend time meeting people. So it has been lovely to have some time to start to get to know Jaq. After the weekend, if the weather stays good, our bows will cross again, heading in different directions, maybe not to cross again for sometime, but that is boating life.

Now that we are no longer embedded in ice, Jaq had a tip for our blog. It seems that having had the ‘Embedded’ box ticked in the settings for comments meant that not everyone could comment on the blog, Jaq, Ali and Les (an old BT colleague of Mick’s) having had difficulty recently. The box has now been unticked, so hopefully commenting will now be possible for all.

0 locks, 0 miles, 8 towels and 4 t-towels washed, 1 speeding ice breaking hire boat, 1 vanished boat, 2 bananas and 200gms chocolate, 1 sock, 1 feline knitting failed, 1 pattern drawn up for next attempt, 1 Jaq, 2 squeaky clean boaters, 4 paws on terra firma.