We were resigned to yet another day iced in at the Lime Kilns when we went to bed last night. During the day I had carried a cassette to the elsan at Trinity marina and the prospect of making the two mile round trip again today didn’t exactly fill me with enthusiasm. At eight o’clock, everything changed when a convoy of five boats crunched through the ice heading north. It seems that they had smashed their way off the Coventry canal yesterday before mooring on the other side of the A5 for the night. It seemed a bit pointless to resume our journey towards Marston junction since we would only have the benefit of the broken ice for less than half a mile. The two remaining options were to stay put or to reverse Caxton all the way back to Nutts lane and attempt to wind in the entrance to the brick wharf. I decided to try the latter with Sue walking ahead to warn of any oncoming boats. In the event, there weren’t any and the trip was fairly easy. Turning around wasn’t so easy because the entrance to the wharf was frozen still but with a bit of manouvering, the ice broke and Caxton was pointing in the right direction again. We stopped at Trinity marina where we emptied the rubbish and the cassettes but failed to fill the water up because the supply was either turned off or frozen. The shop was shut so I wasn’t able to buy gas. As we were about to get underway again, I was approached by another boater who had seen me lift the empty gas cylinder out of the locker and then put it back. He told me that if we were desperate for gas, he had a full spare that we could have and he would buy another when the shop opened on Friday – how kind! The great boating camaraderie is alive and well and living on the Ashby canal. We have enough gas but I thanked him for the offer anyway and we restarted our journey. We met a couple of boats along the way but it was otherwise a lonely cruise in the sunshine. At duck corner, I could see the five members of the ice breaking convoy tied up but facing south. When I questioned the captain of the lead boat, Sextans, he told me that they had turned at Sutton Cheney because the ice was too thick to carry on. We reached the wharf about an hour later and could see that they had given up just after the water point. We struggled a bit to get alongside but eventually made it and filled the water tank before reversing on to the visitor moorings and tying up for the night.
The temperature is predicted to keep rising through the night until reaching 12 degrees tomorrow afternoon, what we don’t know is whether it will be sufficient to melt the ice. With the temperature set to drop again on Friday, we will have to pick our time well for the short hop back to Bosworth marina.