Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and a jaunt in the countryside.

 May 7th.  Morning heavy mist which lifted as sun rose.   Drove on motorway to Wrexham and a necessary laundrette then on to Trevor to the famous aqueduct.

Some discussion with Lady Satnav but she can read Welsh better than I and was therefore correct in remonstrating with us when we went to the Disabled Car Parking and we were not eligible!   Not being able to read Welsh a hindrance too at the Pay and Display machine which took only pound coins.  A fact we only learned by seeing the European tourists ahead of us unsuccessfully fight to insert 50p and 20p coins.   Fortunately I could supply the one pound coins needed for both of us and soon we were displayed and walking along the tow path to the cute little marina area.   

Narrow Boat parking is a highly skilled job.   Reversing into a mooring and not creating traffic jams seems more difficult than I’d thought.   

We took a “there and back” journey across the famous aqueduct with an excellent guide who gave lots of information.  307 metres long, 3.7 metres wide and 38 metres above the floor of the Dee Valley, the aqueduct was completed in 1805.  Built of stone from the local hills and cast iron it took 500 men ten years to build.  

Thomas Telford lived in this charming house during the period of construction.

Having Little Sister with me, I was brave enough to also walk across the tow path and back.  The cast iron posts on the railing are painted in a rotation prescribed  by British Waterways so some are painted one time and others at a different time.  Result is a slightly striped effect but I could see from the patronage today that it must be difficult to find a time for maintenance that doesn’t have too large an effect on the tourism.  The first post at each end of the aqueduct is notched at varying heights where the tow ropes used when horses pulled the narrow boats ground into the cast iron.   The horses were chosen/bred for their strength alone and one horse could tow a 30 ton boat.  Working life for a horse was between 20 and 25 years.   

Our guide was full of interesting facts and also showed us The Plug which British Waterways use when their periodic cleaning of the aqueduct trough requires the water to be removed.  According to her, it actually is a case of pull the plug.

Kayaks also cross - it seems that groups of them are preferred.   Some of the narrow boats are tourist ventures such as ours but there were others which are permanent homes for their owners.   Apparently it is possible by linking up with various other canals to actually travel from Trevor to London in three weeks on this amazing waterway system.

For the return journey Lady Satnav advised to follow the highlighted route and we did.  To our delight this route took us through the beautiful farmland and fat woolly Welsh sheep and abundant lambs.  The road rose into the hills between hedgerows and sometimes stone fences.   

I feel as if I have been misled all these years when told that the early English settlers brought gorse to NZ where it grew rampant and became a scourge on the land.   The impression was that back in the UK gorse was a pretty plant, tame and well under control.   The gorse we saw today looked identical to that at home  so where this fallacy has grown from I don’t know.

Then we turned and were onto a moor like area bounded at the beginning and end with a cattle grid.   Here the rain started and we learned where the windscreen wipers were on this rental car 😉

Later we came through a wooded forest area with abundant mossy banks, swathes of beautiful bluebells and woods that reminded me of the Narnia Books.  

I fully expected to see Mr Tumnus leaping out from the undergrowth.  Quaint little villages like Llanrwst were delightful.   I remember the name of that one as Little Sister spied a woollen yarn shop there but….it was closed.

Safely home to Conwy we drove up the steep drive to our wonderful B and B, Glen Heulog. 

 The owner tells us the original building is from the 1890’s but has been renovated multiple times over the intervening years.