Live Boating

 Saturday 29^th April

Llangollen to Gledrid

Today we started our homeward journey, leaving Llangollen in bright sunshine. This part of the canal has some very scenic views.

It was beginning to look as if the sunshine would not last.

A big black cloud.

So we repeated the last part of yesterday’s trip in the opposite direction – through the narrows with me acting as look-out again, and then over the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct where we stopped and moored up. 

We wanted to go to the visitor centre at Trevor and walk down to the Dee valley and see the aqueduct from below. We walked back across the aqueduct to the wharf at Trevor,  had a coffee from the machine in the Anglo-Welsh hireboat office (the wharf could do with a proper café of some description!) and then made our way down a long flight of steps to the bottom of the valley where there were a couple of places with a good view of the aqueduct. We continued our walk along the River Dee and then climbed another set of steps to another viewpoint before returning to the wharf and another walk across the aqueduct to return to the boat.

Pontcysyllte from river level.

And from a little higher up.

By now it had started to rain, but we decided to move on a bit further. Back through a lift bridge, Whitehouses Tunnel, Chirk Tunnel and Chirk Aqueduct, past Chirk Bank where we had moored a couple of nights ago as far as Gledrid where we decided to stop. The rain continued on and off through the afternoon and evening.

Chirk Aqueduct in the rain.

We made our way through the rain and the puddles to The Poacher for our evening meal.

Today’s miles and locks – 9.50 miles    0 locks      

Total miles and locks – 175.00 miles  98 locks