HAPPY NEW YEAR.

Jo and Keith would like to wish our customers, family and friends a very Happy New Year. Thank you for your support throughout 2010 and we look forward to seeing you all in the New Year.

A Very Happy Christmas.

Keith and Jo would like to wish all their Customers and Friends a Very Happy Christmas and all the very best for the New Year.

We hope that you have a wonderful festive time and it is a happy and safe one.

We look forward to seeing you all in 2011.

Here we go again.....

Hi Folks.

Here we go again, I feel a song coming on.

The temperature here at the moment is almost -4°C and the canal is solid, but if your living on a boat you will already know all of this. I think we can safely say that this is a hard one. We have had two Winter's in one year and for some it is a Winter too far. We are however prepared for what this cold snap has to throw at us. If the online forecasts are correct, then this is going to continue until at least Christmas and who knows it maybe a White Christmas for a change. It has been a blessing for us being moored in the right place at the right time, in our case Market Harborough. We have been stuck here ever since we ploughed through ice from Foxton on the 26th November. Gosh it seems like an age ago. The downside to being frozen in, we cannot get to our customers at Crick or Welford, but we have been in touch with them and given them other alternatives if they are in need of fuel. We do not like letting people down, but unfortunately there is nothing we can do about the weather. No sooner we can move, we will be back on track with our deliveries.

Ice Breaking in the basin for the hire company.

Keith had fun breaking the ice up for the hire company, so they can get their hire boats pumpouts done on Monday.

Coal delivery and Ice breaking.

It has been a very busy day because we filled our hold with a new coal delivery this morning. Tom and Chris arrived and immediately began unloading the coal. It was so much easier because the lorry had a crane arm lifting each pallette off the lorry and down to the wharfside. Then Keith and Tom handed the coal sacks to me and I stacked them in the hold. This should keep us going until after Christmas. Afterwards Keith did some ice breaking in the basin so the hire company can move some of their boats to the service area Monday as they need pumpouts, he then reversed the boat back down the canal to our original mooring, where I think we will be for a while yet, because the canal is still frozen.

Breaking Ice.

We managed to move Hadar 200 metres into the basin ready for a coal delivery tomorrow, but it did take all of 1hr 15mins!! Most of that was trying to get away from the towpath mooring, but once into the middle of the canal and deeper water I was breaking the 3" thick ice quite comfortably. A huge thank you to everyone who helped us break the ice this morning to get us moving. It was very much appreciated.

Tomorrow we will be taking on a coal delivery, which will be very welcome to all of our customers, who are depending on us at the moment to keep them warm.

Radio Interview.

Last year Keith and I were invited to appear on the local radio station Hfm. Moley one of the Dj's asked us if we would like to be on his show and we of course jumped at the opportunity. But because Keith was ill most of last Winter, we never got the chance to go into the radio station. Today we put that right and at 1pm we were on air with Moley answering the listeners questions and discussing the Waterway's with Moley. Time really does fly when your having fun, because before we knew it the clock was showing 3pm and time for Moley to wrap up his show. Keith and I had a really good time and were made to feel very welcome by everyone at the station. It is definitely something I would do again.
Before we left for the radio station, we enjoyed a coffee and a natter on NB Acen with Jo and John, who also invited along Chrissie and Richard from NB Digitalis and Jill and Don from NB Idunno, a good time was had by all. We had to cut our visit short to go to the radio station.

Christmas comes to our boat.

With the weather being the way it is, it seemed like the right time to put up the fairy lights and Christmas Tree. If only Christmas Day was here, because with the snow we have it would be very festive.

Is it a lane or is it the canal........................... It's the canal.

Frozen in and going nowhere. As someone said to me today. We are all in the same boat. The weather forecast is not hopeful of this ending anytime soon, so it looks like we will be here for sometime. Thank you all of our customers who have driven to us to collect their coal. If we could move we would, but at the moment it is just not possible.