Our first full day on the canal brought us from Ellesmere, England into Wales. It was a bright, but chilly start to the morning and we set off after after a cup of tea. We motored on for about an hour and found a quiet spot to tie up and make breakfast. Our little kitchen is serving us well.
The countryside here is beautiful! Rolling green hills dotted with farms and cottages. Small villages with lovely old churches. More sheep and cows around every bend. It is very peaceful to meander along the canal. This is definitely the time of year to come for a narrowboat holiday. We have encountered very few boats as we are traveling, making for a relaxing time as skipper. We trade off skippering throughout the day, taking turns maneuvering bridge passings, locks and tea preparations.
This stretch of the canal system only has 2 locks to navigate. We have found that locks not near a busy town center will be self service. We were traveling upstream, so these locks were lifting our boat. The sequence of events to accomplish this are 1) pull over to the towpath and one person hops out 2) If a boat has gone up ahead of you, the lock needs to be drained – with top and bottom gates closed, open bottom paddles and water rushes out. As soon as the lower water level equalizes, the lower gates will open and you drive the boat in 3) close lower paddles and slowly open the top gate paddles 4) water fills the lock and the boat rises 5) when water level equalizes with the top level, the gates will open and you drive out. There’s a lot of cranking and running back and forth for the person on land, but it’s fun. Today we have a succession of 4 boats traveling through these locks, so it worked out that the person waiting for their boat to enter helped the previous boat go through, saving some time and running back and forth.
When the canal needs to cross a valley it uses an aqueduct. These are very impressive structures and feats of engineering – especially considering that they were built over 200 years ago. The first of these that we crossed was the Chirk Aqueduct, 710 feet long and 70 feet above the River Ceiriog (yes, we enter Wales as we cross the aqueduct). There was a similar train crossing running parallel to the aqueduct. The canal then immediately enters the Chirk tunnel, which is just over 1/4 mile in length. The tunnel is only one boat wide, so you need to ensure no boats are coming at you before you enter. Luckily, you can see the end of the tunnel, and boats have good tunnel lights making them clear to see.
The highlight of this section of canal is the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct. This one is over 1000 feet long and 126 feet above the valley. The entire structure is only 12 feet wide, with a water channel just wide enough for 1 boat and a towpath for pedestrians. At least the pedestrians have a guardrail on their side – no such thing for the boats, just a small lip of steel to keep the water in! It was very fun to cross, although I did have to move over to the towpath side after the first few bumps along the edge. I took a video of the crossing, which I will post later. We’ll cross it again tomorrow and I’ll get some better shots of the whole structure.
We finished up the day making it most of the way to Llangollen, and mooring alongside the towpath. Another tasty meal for the hungry crew, and, even though we were 2 miles from town, we took a walk in to check it out. After all, it’s hard to get your daily steps in when you’re on a boat! The town was bigger and busier than we had expected, but with lots of charm. We found a great pub right on the river and made reservations for dinner the next night, specifically requesting a table overlooking the river.
