Les Grands Froids

It has been really cold here for about a week now. We had planned to go hiking with some friends on the 1st but due to the freezing weather, we decided to head for Beaune instead. It was too cold to wander around so we visited it's famous Hotel Dieu. It was built in 1443 by Nicolas Rolin, Chancellor to the Duke of Burgundy, as a Hospice for the poor. He very sensibly donated a saltworks and a vineyard to provide a perpetual income. Beautiful building and interesting museum - it was in use as a hospital until 1971 and still houses a retirement home. As well as the usual items you might expect to find in a hospital museum, there is a superb collection of 16th Century tapestries and some very fine religious art.

The temperature seems to hover around -6 during the day and has been down to -12 overnight. It's really sunny so we have been out for some short walks  - the ice sculptures around the lock are amazing. The canal is completely frozen. David did have a go at breaking it up around our boat, but it re-froze so quickly, he decided it wasn't worth it. As the temperature drops overnight, the expanding ice pushes against the hulls of the boats and forces cracks to appear. The reverberations of this cracking echo through the boat and it sounds and feels like we're colliding with a large, heavy object. We're getting used to it now, but the first time it happened we both woke up with a start wondering what on earth was happening.