The Spectacular End of the Llangollen Canal

We arrived in Llangollen on Sunday and enjoyed a couple of days there.  The final day on the Llangollen Canal is probably the most spectacular cruise possible on Britain's canals.  But I am getting ahead of myself.  At the last posting we were at the end of the Montgomery Canal or at least at the end of the bit you can navigate from the Llangollen Canal.  Last Friday we set off back towards the Llangollen Canal.

This is Maesbury Parish Church near the end of the Monty.  It was built in 1906 out of corrugated iron in an early 'flat pack' that came on the back of a lorry.  It was a lovely little church and is still used today.

This is one of the lock paddle gears that Canal and River Trust experimented with.  Because of the two metal rods welded on you cannot lift the ratchet out of the way altogether so you cannot drop the paddle rapidly whether intentionally (sensible in an emergency) or unintentially (a recipe for broken teeth as the windlass flies off).  CRT has now been persuaded not to introduce any more of these.

Now this is a curious way to moor!  The picture shows Leo at the entrance to the long disused Rednall Basin.  The white railings are on an old swing bridge that took the towpath over the entrance to the Basin.  We wanted to have a look at the Basin but it is so overgrown with nettles that we gave up the idea.





We spent Friday evening on the Weston Branch where we had moored on the way out and on Saturday we came up the Frankton Locks and back onto the Llangollen Canal.

I'm not sure if you can read this plaque which is to be found below the second lock at Frankton (going up).  Cressy was the boat of Tom Rolt, whose book 'Narrowboat' began the efforts to restore the canals.   Cressy was converted for leisure use in a dry dock here.

 As well as the four Frankton Locks we also came up the two New Marton Locks which are the last two locks on the Llangollen.  Here Leo is coming up in New Marton Top Lock.  The lock cottage is in a remote spot a mile from the nearest road, but it has its own mooring.  Wonder when it will be for sale?

On Saturday evening we were relaxing on the boat when we had a visitor from one of the neighbouring houses at Rhoswiel where we moored.  She was a very friendly cat, but left us when she had taken a good look round Leo from stern to bow.







The last 10 miles into Llangollen are really spectacular with two high aqueducts and two tunnels, as well as a section from Trevor to Llangollen which is not only shallow but also has three sections which are too narrow to pass a boat going the other way and you have a strong current against you.

Chirk Aqueduct comes first. This has the railway viaduct alongside.

Here is the view looking back over Chirk Aqueduct.  This is built of stone and it is a big drop down from the aqueduct to the River Ceiriog below.  By this point we were finally in Wales.

There is a small basin on the far side of the Aqueduct and then you are into the Chirk Tunnel.  This is about a third of a mile long and has a towpath running through it.  However it is very much single file for boats.  This is probably the busiest part of the canal system and so it can be necessary to walk through to hold up boats coming the other way.

After a second tunnel you begin to catch glimpses through the trees of the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, Telford's masterpiece.  An iron trough is carried on stone piers 126 feet above the River Dee.  

Here Leo is just starting to cross the Pontcysyllte.  You can tell it is a weekend by all the pedestrians on the towpath side.  That has a railing but on the other side only four inches separates you from the drop of 120 plus feet into the valley or the river.  It is not a place for vertigo sufferers.

This gives a good idea of how little separates the boat and its crew from a long fall.  Never mind wearing a lifejacket, here you need a parachute!

Here is Leo 'flying' over the Dee Valley.

And this is the view down to the River below.  At the middle of the section above the River is a plug which can be pulled to empty the Aqueduct for maintenance.  Fortunately the plug is padlocked to stop someone doing this for fun.  The iron trough has sections morticed together like woodwork, sealed with Welsh flannel and lead mixed with boiling sugar.  It was built in 1805 and still does not leak.

You cannot take your boat over here without featuring in lots of tourist photos.

After bumping on the bottom a few times and having to back up in the narrows, we arrived in Llangollen on Sunday afternoon.  The picture is of the River Dee from the lovely bridge at Llangollen.  The steam railway is to the right and the canal basin is high above the river.

This is the Canal Basin with Llantysilio Mountain behind.














We made the most of our maximum 48 hours mooring in the basin which was pretty near full both days.  There is a lot to see around Llangollen and you are very much in the hills on the edge of the North Wales mountains so walking here is excellent.

This is Plas Newydd, an amazing house full of reclaimed oak carvings from churches and older furniture.  The house was occupied from 1780 for 49 years by the Two Ladies of Llangollen, Lady Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby.  No-one knows quite what were their domestic arrangements but it is pretty clear that they were very fond of each other.

Here are the two ladies on a monument in the parish church, St Collen.  We learned that 'Llan' means church or parish and this is followed by the name of the saint, so Llan + Collen = Llangollen and Llan + Tysilio = Llantysilio (nearby).

This is the view at Plas Newydd from Lady Eleanor's bower down to the valley below the house.

Though you have to pay to go in the house, the gardens and grounds, including this lovely valley, are free for all to enjoy.  With the sun coming through the trees it was quite magical.

A bit out of order I admit, but this is the view you get cruising towards Llangollen.  The hill in the background is Castell Dinas Bran which was an iron age hill fort and on which a castle was built in the 13th century.  The hill is a powerful fortification in its own right and is just over 1,000 feet above sea level.  So of course we had to climb up.

Here is the view from the top through part of the ruins of the castle.  The ruins are a lot more extensive than appears from below.

As well as giving views down to Llangollen at its foot, Dinas Bran gives distant views towards Snowdonia.












On Tuesday we visited Valle Crucis Abbey, a Cistercian Abbey built in the early 13th century and then we walked up the delightfully named Velvet Hill and followed a lovely ridge down to Horseshoe Falls.

Although the Abbey is largely a ruin we were surprised to find that the Monk's dormitory and Abbot's lodging was more intact with two stories and a proper roof.

The Abbey had a fish pond which helped to feed the monks as they did not eat meat.  You can see Velvet Hill behind the Abbey in this photo.

Near the Abbey is Eliseg's Pillar.  This was erected in the 9th century and used to be a cross six metres high.  After the Puritans got to it in the 17th century only the shaft remains and this was re-erected in 1789.

Here is the view from Velvet Hill with Castell Dinas Bran the mound you can see to the left, the River Dee below this and the town of Llangollen to the right nestling in the valley.  The canal between Horseshoe Falls and Llangollen is just to the left of the river.

Telford made the horseshoe shaped weir which is designed to feed water from the River Dee into the Llangollen Canal and still does so today.  One main purpose of this part of the canal was to supply water to the Shropshire Union Canal system and it also supplies drinking water for parts of Cheshire.

The couple of miles of canal between Horseshoe Falls and Llangollen is not for ordinary boats having no provision to turn and being too shallow.  However a horse drawn boat travels this section and here is Geordie pulling a boat full of visitors.  We later met Hercules pulling another boat.







We had to leave Llangollen on Tuesday evening as our two days mooring was expiring but we did not go far choosing to moor with views of the Dee Valley before reaching Trevor where the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct takes boats back over the Dee.  Today we've come part way back and, after mooring above the New Marton Locks until evening we came down the locks late today and we've moored below.  One boat here waited two hours to come down because there are so many boats here.  Our strategy of occupying ourselves above until evening meant we had no queue and enjoyed our evening cruise.  And we listened to the Archers before we came down!

In the next few days we will be retracing our outward journey along the Llangollen Canal and back to the Shropshire Union.

Up the Monty with some intrepid exploring

As I type this we are moored pretty well as far as you can get from the connected canals on the Montgomery Canal which we've never travelled before.  We've been refreshed by a good lunch at the Navigation Inn at Maesbury Marsh, so now is the time to update our blog.

The last posting was from Whitchurch from where Ian caught the train back home to check all was well.  It was.  He came back on Saturday and we carried on up the Llangollen Canal.

Now don't you think that the chap in the hat looks like John Sargeant on 'Barging through Britain'?  No it wasn't him!

On Saturday evening we moored close to Whixall Moss.  The 'Mosses' round here are raised peat bogs which date back to depressions created in the last ice age.  We followed a suggested walk around the Moss.  Helen is next to a pile of peats cut from the Moss, though they don't let you do this any more.

The water table is close to the surface and there are a few pools of standing water like this one, which was said to be home to a very rare spider which walks on the water.










On Sunday we turned off the main route onto the Prees Branch which is now only about a mile long but used to be  much longer.  We moored near the end of the navigable section and walked through very wet vegetation to explore some more of the branch.

The Prees Branch soon becomes narrow and shallow meaning progress is slow.  However there is a large marina at the end.

This is as far as you can now go on a boat.  To the left you can see boats in the marina.  To the right, among the trees, is the continuation of the Prees Branch which we followed on foot.

Here is Boodles Bridge now crossing an overgrown ditch.

Prees Branch, though short, has a couple more lift bridges to keep boaters on their toes.

On Sunday evening we moored in the rain by Blake Mere and this is the view of the lake (Mere = Lake) from Leo.  The three drakes thought they were going to get fed.  It was rather dark and drippy under the  trees, but it would be a lovely spot for some shade on a hot summer's day.






On Monday we cruised on to Ellesmere and spent much of a wet day looking round the town.  We thought this was a delightful place with a canal wharf on one side and another Mere on the other.  The Meres are also a legacy of the last ice age.

We moored on the junction with the arm that leads down to Ellesmere (and a handy Tesco's).  Behind Leo is Beech House, built by Telford as canal offices.  We had endless entertainment watching boats going down the arm, backing out and failing to turn the sharp bend here.

This is both a service block for boaters and a large historic yard for Canal and River Trust.

Up a very steep hill from the town of Ellesmere is what was once a mound with the medieval castle on top.  The top of the mound is now a bowling green which came as a bit of a surprise.  However the mound gives a good view of the church and the Mere behind.

Here is the church seen from the promenade by the Mere.  The church has a superb 14th century carved wooden ceiling to a chapel, a 13th century rood screen and the grave of Sir Francis Kynaston who was cup bearer (and presumably food taster) to Elizabeth I.  The promenade by the Mere was like a Victorian sea front.  The boathouse restaurant provided a good lunch and was very popular.



We had booked ahead to go down the Frankton Locks which take boats down 4 locks at the start of the Montgomery Canal.  This canal used to go 35 miles South to the River Severn at Newtown.  At present there is a break in the canal after 7 miles so you cannot go so far.

The Llangollen Canal is very popular.  We had to wait at this bridge for a convoy of four boats heading the other way.

The Frankton Locks begin with a double staircase, seen here with another boat going between the top and bottom locks of the staircase.

This view looks back at the staircase.  The other two locks are single locks and a short distance beyond these another old branch - the Weston Branch - goes left.   We moored at the entrance to this branch.

The Weston Branch was intended to go to Shrewsbury and meet the River Severn there.  It never got so far but did extend several miles in that direction.  Walking up the Branch now leads to this weedy end in just a hundred yards or so.

From the nearby bridge you can see the Weston Branch heading away from you with Leo moored with another boat.  The route to the Frankton Locks lies to the left.










Yesterday we cruised through four locks and came to the present end of the Monty at Maesbury Marsh.

These water lilies (in fact I think they are yellow globe flowers) were in a winding hole.  The reflections above and below the flowers look to me like an impressionist painting.  This was Helen doing her Monet imitation.

The bridges on the Monty are pretty narrow but some are made even tighter by wooden boards to avoid you hitting concrete mouldings to take stop boards.

Montgomery Canal mile posts are quite distinctive.

With little boating traffic down here the water stays placid and gives some fine reflections.  The Canal goes through a very green corridor and the towpath is overgrown sufficiently to discourage wild mooring, though there is no shortage of visitor moorings at the fleshpots.

This old wharf beyond Maesbury Marsh is now the last point to turn round.  There is a horse drawn boat that does trips beyond the bridge in the background but that can be pulled backwards.  Going further in a powered boat would mean a lot of reversing and is not encouraged.

Croft's Mill Lift Bridge is the last one on the navigable section but gets a lot of use as each boat passing to reach the winding hole then has to come back through it.










Yesterday afternoon was fine to start with so we decided to cycle further along the canal.  Unfortunately we got caught in not one but two torrential downpours.  For the first we sheltered first under trees, then under a canal bridge and then retired to a pub.  For the second we sheltered in a barn where cows came through from the milking parlour; a farm worker, Del, took pity on us and gave us and the Bromptons a lift back to the boat!

This is the bridge you can see beyond the winding hole.  The black notice hiding on the right of the bridge hole says "No entry.  Horse drawn only."  But it is quite inconspicuous.

At the next bridge the water level becomes lower beyond the temporary fence which stands on top of stop planks.

And at the following bridge navigation is definitely out of the question, though you can see that  restoration is very much in progress.

 Further on there is just an overgrown ditch and at one point steps up and down disguise the old canal bed where old tramway workings cross the canal.  Round Pant and Llanymynech limestone and lime were loaded onto canal boats.

Approaching Llanymynech we found navigable water once more as this narrowboat moored there shows.

The Llanymynech road bridge (under which we sheltered) marks the Welsh boundary.  The front wall of the Lion Inn where we warmed and sheltered ourselves before starting our cycle back has the boundary along its front wall.  So you can have a drink in England, but if you step outside you are in Wales.  An Englishman at the bar told us he has to travel through foreign lands to get a drink in his own country!


Today we spent the morning drying out things that had unfortunately got rather wet yesterday including servicing the bikes.  We've been for a couple of short walks but the rain comes and goes and we are staying put today.  We've booked our return through Frankton Locks for Saturday so we shall set out tomorrow back up the Monty which has been very quiet and peaceful after the hustle and bustle of the Llangollen.  We will be trying to dodge the queues of boats once we are back on the Llangollen.  Though we've avoided coming here in school holidays I think it will still be pretty busy.  Perhaps we'll take to cruising in the early mornings and evenings.