Is winter over?

December on the Crouch was not a good time for us, the freezing weather & snow caused us no end of problems.

The snow at the beginning of the month was so bad, that I was unable to leave the barge for 6 days! Barney (dog) had to rely upon Steph to take him for his daily 'walkies' however, even Steph had problems walking along the pontoons.

To take my mind off not being able to get out, I decided to finally put back all the wood panelling in the kitchen/dinning room. The purchase of a nail gun a few weeks earlier turned out to be a good buy, I think I would still be banging in nails now!

The picture shows the cladding at the point of being removed to gain access to the arched windows. These had to be removed & resealed with sikoflex, luckily I was able to remove the ones in the living room & mezzanine, without having to take down all the wooden cladding.

By the end of the week, I was glad to see a thaw outside so, that we could at least get back to some form of normal routine.