If you look really carefully you can just see the ice on the canal, evident as we heard it gently crack as we went to fill the boat with water at nearly midday. No wonder we are feeling the chill! No problem though. We get the heating on (even though it involves having to go outside to turn on the engine, a task nobley taken on by R who has to get dressed and then undressed!) and once the water is hot, can indulge in a lovely steaming bath. When you know you are then going to fill the tank with water you can have the bath as deep as possible assuming the heating has been on long enough to make copious hot water. Which mercifully it had this morning!
After filling with water we successfully, without incident or loss of temper, reversed the boat back to its mooring, with the help of R on the towpath pulling the midrope. At one point it was a close shave to us straddling the canal but a quick thrust forward realigned the boat and we continued our strategy of R doing all the pulling backwards. Such a good feeling knowing we have plenty of water and clean potty cassettes!
Market day in LB so we went and bought a loaf of bread and were very dr samosas but resisted temptation. Don’t think they will help our cholesterol levels! We then walked in a slightly new direction (I think we are rapidly exhausting all routes out of LB Town centre) and found ourselves in the flooded meadows abreast the towpath that I photographed a few days ago. Mercifully the water level had dropped considerably and we were able to walk along the pathways. Quite icy but we walked with care.
Arriving back at the boat I had a sudden urge to cook. I had made some wonderful chicken stock which I used 3 ways – celery soup; chicken and veg pie topped with mixed root veg (courtesy of Burns Night mash with added carrots); chilli venison and mixed bean mince – using the uber hot chilli olives! And then I made up a carrot cake recipe using some of the mashed up carrot. Not a bad result considering I had no way of weighing anything! Some online Trickster Bridge with friends in the evening followed by an episode of Schitts Creek finished the day well! SC has been recommended to us and we weren’t sure about it to begin with, but it’s growing on us as we get to know the characters. Each episode is short so a convenient burst of light entertainment at the end of the day.
NarrowboatTLC 