You come across different things while travelling on the canals, someone would have found their way blocked by this large tree that had fallen recently. Canal and River Trust are called to clear blockages like this.
The main attraction on this Canal is the Pontcysylite Aquaduct which was engineered by Thomas Telford in the late 1700's, there are a number of engineering features in the building of this Aquaduct plus many more bridges and canals.
The World Heritage listed Aquaduct engineering feat is the Pontcysylite pictured here with the tough being only just wide enough to take the Narrowboats with a tow path about 80cm wide that we walked across as well as going over in the narrowboat. It's 307 mtrs long, 3.6 mtrs wide, 1.6 mtrs deep and 38 mtrs high over the river Dee.
This is a carriage from the 1904 Flying Scottsman Train that ran from Edinburough to London.
We did the train trip for Llangollen but unfortunately the steam train is only running at weekends until April, it was still well worth the trip on the old diesel rail car. We got off at Berwyn and walked across the chain link bridge to the Horseshoe Falls also engineered by Telford. This is where the canal begins by diverting the River Dee to allow just the right amount of water to flow into the canal. This first picture shows the beginning with the rest going over the falls and continuing along the River Dee.
Inside this building the flow of water to the canal is constantly measured to ensure adequate flow to the canal system.
Four canoes turned up these turned out to be containing British Army Soldiers out on manouvers. They had come from the upper Dee now had to transfer to the canal and continue on to Llangollen.
Back to the chain link brige where we stopped in at the Pub for a hot chocolate, it was relaxing toward the end of a tiring day.
The scenery is varied all the time, this time a field of cows.
We returned to the Marina where we had picked up the boat 10 days before. It was time to do some washing, boat checks, refuel etc then continued along the Llangollen Canal to the other end where it joins the Shropshire Union Canal. We had to pass our first staircase of 4 locks, we were pleased to see volunteers working these locks.
