Yet more ice and snow

Wednesday 20th - Sunday 31st January 2010

We hoped to move from Great Haywood tomorrow so we took a walk to Tixal Wide to see what the water was like ...

although the Wide was clear there was a lot of thick ice floating on the top of a sheet of ice so we decided that we'd stay a few more days.
Spring lambs already! taken at Tixal Lock where we turned back to the junction - the towpath was atrocious, thick gluppy mud!

Saturday 23rd
Off we go, after mooring on the towpath at Great Haywood for a few more days we upped sticks, filled with water and turned right onto the Staffs and Worcester Canal through Tixal - Molly in her usual spot warm in her sheepskin
leaving Tixal behind us.

We cruised on to Park Gate Lock and moored up just past Midland Chandlers for a few nights and eventually upped sticks from there on Wednesday 27th to travel to Penkridge.

Whilst at Penkridge on the Friday afternoon we were just off to take Molly for a walk and opening the front canopy was met by 2 lovely collies whimpering for attention - it was Lucy and Meg from NB No Problem just pulling in to moor a couple of boats behind us. Although I've followed their blog from before Rock'n'Roll was completed I had never met them so I was delighted to be able to do so now albeit for just a few minutes - I hope we meet up again in the not too distant future.


The same afternoon whilst on the boat, a couple of children walking home from school stepped onto the gunwale of Rock'n'Roll rocking her, George banged on the window but they took no notice and instead the two of them picked up our boat pole from its stand on the roof, George banged harder on the window and shouted to them to 'GET OFF', this time they did having dropped the pole very quickly, fortunately back onto the roof not into the water - the little s*ds!

Saturday 30th - Ice had formed on the canal last night so we decided to move on again before it became any worse - this picture was taken from the water point just above the lock as we filled up before leaving. I took Molly for a quick walk whilst the water was taken on and noticed the buds coming on the hawthorn; Molly found the young nettle shoots and spent the next hour or so biting at her feet to get rid of the stings! leaving Rodbaston lock through the ice

Boggs Lock

in the directors chair taking note of everything going on

looking back from Boggs Lock - the sun was very strong

and eventually arriving at Gailey Bridge where we moored up

Sunday 31st

Woke up to a covering of snow this morning ..

I had to drag a couple of yards of the inevitable BW orange 'fencing' out of the water as we were mooring yesterday to prevent it getting entangled in the propellor

the view above top lock
a pretty picture

Molly's best sit! On our walk this afternoon we came upon some 'boys with their toys' - flying model airplanes and watched them for a while - I was surprised how big they were when they landed - we had watched them from the boat when we passed this way last but not from so close quarter. On the way back we got caught in a snow fall and arrive back at R'n'R looking as if we'd been seived with icing sugar!

It's definitely a Deja Vous moment for us as it's 12 months and 3 weeks since this happened to us here at Gailey; we were stuck here for 10 days then, the forecast isn't great either - snow and temperatures below freezing at night for the next 5 days! It's 17:45 as I'm writing this blog and it's already -1degree, so we shall probably stay here for the duration with all the services to hand that we may need.