Wednesday 27 December 2017

Final Luton Christmas

We’ve been moored at Leighton Buzzard for almost 2 weeks as it was so convenient to get to the house. We hired a car to get to & from Luton as it’s only 10 miles. Ada wanted to host Christmas in her house as she was born there and plans to move away in the new year and we’ll sell it as we know after 2 years this is the life afloat for us. She’d originally invited 22 people but we ended up with a manageable 12 for dinner.


Nikita

Magnus' dog made by Nikita
Lance's second Christmas





Facetime with Edmund who was at work
Jack, John & Paul


Louise, Alice Lance & Heather



Heather & Jason drove down the Saturday before Christmas arriving just in time to go to panto in Dunstable and “oh yes we did” have a good time.

Heather, Magnus, John, Nikita, Alf, Lynn, Ada

Dale, Samantha, Lance, Jason, Heather, Magnus










The Grove Theatre, Dunstable




Luckily we had very little snow this morning compared to some parts of England, as we needed to return the hire car. There were torrents of rain last night which has been reflected in the level of water in the canal, we needed to loosen our ropes as it’s so high. Just behind where we’re moored there’s a weir which has not had anything much going over it until today. We have in the past seen the weir opposite the Wyvern hire boat base, over flowing and indeed it is again today completely flooding the park below.

Hire car before we cleared it's snow
Weir in flood by Wyver Shipping Co













We’ve had some pretty cold weather over the last few weeks with the lowest temperature -6c. We had to abort our original journey to Leighton Buzzard due to getting stuck in really thick ice at Slapton (there was no ice at Marsworth where we’d been). The noise of the boat breaking the ice is incredibly loud. Luckily, we arrived in Leighton Buzzard on the day of Leighton Buzzard Brewery’s open day. John enjoyed seeing his friend Jon that owns it, even if he didn’t recognise him because he’d grown a beard. We stocked up on beer for Christmas, handy really. Although we’ve been to Leighton Buzzard many times mainly to walk along the canal or go on the steam railway we’ve never been into the town. It’s a beautiful traditional old town with a proper market, independent shops and lots of lovely pubs.

The ice we broke mooring at Slapton
Slapton









John keeping warm at the brewery




No comments:

Post a Comment