At around 6 o’clock, just before dawn, the frost stat turned the heating on! So it must have been only about 3° in our bedroom. At around seven I got up to make a cup of tea and check that fire was still in, it was, so I stoked it up, opened up the air a bit and went back to bed with the tea. We eventually got up just after eight.

When I put my head up through the hatch it was obvious that the rain from the previous evening had frozen during the night. The boat was covered in a layer of ice.

We stopped for breakfast at Kinver.
When I when to tie up I found the ropes rather stiff!

Pleasantly sunny but uneventful day, not much boat traffic about. Arrived at the bottom of Bratch to find the locks empty and waiting for us. Dave the lockie said that he had been busy earlier, but after we went up only one other boat went down. We moored for the night on the visitor’s mooring at the top.

We dont usually watch TV when boating. In fact we previously hadnt’t had a TV set on board. But for this trip I had brought a small flat screen set from home togther with a digibox. I’d checked that they were 12v compatible and stopped at Halfords in Kidderminster to get the bits & pieces I needed to make up the power leads. It wasnt until I started to do the job that I realised the plug connections needed to be soldered.  It was still only about half past three so we decided to walk into Womborne to see if I could get what I needed. Womborne has a hardware/DIY shop which may  stock soldering irons, but I couldn’t check because it closes on Wednesday afternoons!

No TV tonight.