We spent Monday in Ellesmere where Robin got his leg inspected and dressed by a new set of nurses. He also washed the boat, talking to all and sundry as they walked past complimenting his efforts. Jo scooted off to Shrewsbury with Carole for some girlie shopping.
On Tuesday the weather was forecast fine and Carole joined us for a days cruising. We meandered 9.5 miles to Chirk Bank and with only 2 locks to do, there was quite a lot of sitting in the sun watching the world go by.
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| The sitting spot |
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| Some girlie lock action. |
Carole was collected in the evening but returned the next day with Sean for the final leg of the journey to Llangollen. Not such nice weather today but no rain. Sean was official photographer for the day and did a grand job. We started the day by crossing the Chirk aqueduct, with the railway viaduct alongside (and above- apparently built higher to show it's superiority to the canal) and the Chirk tunnel. The strong flow of the water coming towards us in the narrow space caused Harold to make rather heavy weather of the tunnel.
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| Robin looking at the view from the Chirk aqueduct. |
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| Chugging slowly along inside Chirk tunnel. |
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| Carole, pleased to be out of the tunnel at last. |
We had a lovely cruise towards Trevor, the last stop before entering the winding tail end of the canal. Sean encountered his first lift bridge there.
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| A Scooby-eye view of the cruise to Trevor. |
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| Sean helping (?) at the lift bridge. |
Just before arriving in Trevor we had to cross the marvellous Pontcysyllte Aqueduct. It's one way so we stopped at the start when we saw there was oncoming traffic. This turned out to be opera singer Bryn Terfel perched on the brow of a day-boat singing his heart out while being filmed by a TV camera and with two drones overhead. It took us a while to work out what was going on!
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| I think I can hear singing! |
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| Ah! Its Bryn |
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| Bryn meets captain Rob |
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| Bryn, clearly star-struck, photo-bombs captain Rob! |
After the general hilarity had died down we began our crossing. The aqueduct takes the canal across the river Dee and is 126 feet high and 1007 feet long. Its basically a long metal trough set on concrete pillars, just wide enough for a narrow boat, with nothing on one side and a narrow pathway and fence on the other. Robin drove, of course and Sean photographed. Carole, such a confident sailor now, stood at the front, Bryn style, and Jo, as always with anything high up, cowered inside. Happily everyone survived.
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