Market Harborough to Foxton

It was fantastic to wake up this morning, to snow falling in Market Harborough. Paddy loved his walk in the snow, which was a little scary under foot, because the snow was covering frozen puddles. I nearly landed on my behind a few times. Before setting off we made a coal delivery to one of the boats on the towpath moorings. Having wrapped up in all our winter clothing, we left our mooring, with the snow falling gently. It was not long before we were in the middle of a snowstorm. Keith could have done with windscreen wipers on his eyeballs. He did look very festive covered in snow. At no point was he cold though, as he had the heat from the back cabin stove travelling up his legs.
We got to the Foxton Swing Bridge and had real problems getting it open, which has been an issue for us on a couple of occasions. So Keith used the bow to push the bridge open. Closing it had been fine, until today when no amount of pushing would shift the bridge. So Keith had to reverse Hadar against the half shut bridge to help it on its way. We have reported it to BW, but not sure they can do much at the moment with the weather conditions.
We arrived at Foxton after cruising for a couple of hours and moored up in front of Ann and Kev on NB Endeavour, they had left Market Harborough a few minutes before us.
We could not resist walking up the locks in the snow, to see if the work has been completed. We were greeted by a winter wonderland and Gerald the Lock Keeper, who was in the process of filling the pounds and locks with water.

We have no idea how long Gerald had been working out in the snow, but I would think it takes quite sometime to fill the flight and its side ponds, but he seemed to be enjoying it in the snow. We were the only ones brave enough to be out in the snowstorm.We love the snow, so to have this much and to be able to cruise in it was just wonderous. There was some ice on the canal, but not enough to worry us and it was patchy. Having had a chat with Gerald and taken these photographs, we called into the Bridge 61 pub for a coffee, where we found Ann and Kev having a drink. It was nice and warm in the bar as Tony had logs burning on the fire. Having nattered with Ann and Kev we ventured back to the boat.We are now at Foxton for the weekend. We have a few people who want coal over the next couple of days, so we will be making deliveries over the weekend. I am hoping for more snow, so I can get some festive photographs of Hadar.