The coal man delivers

When we brought Percy back from Braunston we got iced in at Nuneaton, the dog poo capital of the canals as I recall ! We were stuck, gave it a go and failed plus we were getting the usual hard stares from other boaters worried about their blacking.

Then like a knight in shining armour we heard a chug chug chug and coal boat Callisto appeared, forming a channel for us to follow on our timed return to Fradley. Read of it here ...

We have stayed loyal to Mark and Calliso, so far this year having two deliveries. We have used Shobnall for 4 bags of Excel at the start of autumn.

Re the coal we have tried..

Orange bag - not sure it has a name
Homefire ovals
Excel

The latter is now our favourite, small ovals and much less ash than the Homefire stuff. I can easily keep the fire in on all three but the ash pan was being emptied twice a day with the Homefire ovals and only once a day with Excel.

Mark delivers to the boat of course and while down south last weekend he kindly dropped off gas and coal to my store - anyone who has humped many bags of coal across lock gates will appreciate the benefit of boat side deliveries. We use little diesel so do not top up often and Percy has two massive tanks.

In this cold snap I have been using about a bag and a half a week - so £15 cheap living I say

So for my records....

Since autumn I have brought 17 x 25kg of coal = 425kg and I have 7 bags left  175kg so I have used just under 250kg of coal.

I post the above in case I do this winter living again next year.... I will then order one big drop when Mark comes by.

Finally it is good to keep the canal coal boaters in business, they provide a very valuable service.