I hope that everyone had a good Christmas. We had 22 friends and family over for dinner on Christmas Day. With not having room to seat everyone on the boats we extending into the Tea room. Everyone did something to help and it all came together spectacularly well.

Here's a picture of the table, unfortunately it doesn't show everyone present.



We were left with quite alot of food yesterday so we decided to do a buffet for anyone that turned up and wanted to join us. I think there were twelve in the end and Sue did a sterling job at making a large Bubble and Squeak. This was followed by by a boating quiz and Trivial Pursuit. We tidied the place up ready for this morning and we were all tucked up in our relevant homes by about 10.30pm.

We are operating on skeleton staff again today. So there's not much to report on that front!

The temperature increased noticeably last night. It had been -5°C here all day, but when we went home last night it was above freezing. Unbelievably the canal has started to thaw, although there are still huge icebergs, but they are now floating, rather than being frozen in one big mass!

We are hoping to dock a boat on Wednesday, so we will hope that this thaw continues - but how long for? I've heard weather reports that say that we are going to have another load of snow and then it's going to freeze again, but we will have to wait and see.

That's everything to report from me today! Over to Simon tomorrow.

Regards,

David