Canal Highlights

Let me get my wifi grump out of the way.  This is the first chance I have had to get on-line since my last entry a week ago.  Most nights I have tried to get on line in various locations but without success.  I was even in a school this morning (250 children) and the school and town library did not have wifi connectivity!  However, I am now able to get another entry on this blog.
Please also note that my last entry ended up with many mistakes.  This was after no less than 10 tries at publishing the post, each one cancelling out before editing could happen.  In the end I chose to publish with the mistakes rather than not put anything on line.  Hopefully most of these errors are now corrected.

Our Canal journey finishes tomorrow.  We have had a marvelous time and I have visited three schools along the way.  The highlight of the time would have to be at the end of the journey to Llangollen in northern Wales.  See the photos below.

This is the Chirk Aqueduct.  The canal goes across the lower of the two bridges and I had to take the narrow boat over it.  It sounds a bit scary but all you have to do is make sure no one is coming the other way and then steer your boat onto the aqueduct (bridge) and it will keep you going straight to the other side.  There are no sides on the bridge so you have to be careful.  These bridges are over 200 years old and are amazing to see.

This is another, and even bigger, aqueduct - the largest on the canal system and is in north Wales.  It is called the Pontycysyllte Aqueduct.  It was opened in 1801.  It runs over the River Dee and is 126 feet high (nearly 40 metres) and 1007 feet long (over 300m).  As you can see in the photo there is a footpath and rail on one side and no rails on the other.  It was a Sunday afternoon and there were lots people from the towns on each side of the valley walking across beside the boats.  We were part of a group of 5 boats going in one direction and when we had finished there were boats on the other side lined up to go the other way.

One of the interesting things about canals is that they run at an almost flat level.  The water does run down hill but only at a very gentle pace.  The main way to get higher or lower is through using locks.  Another way the builders used was to build aqueducts (see above) or to cut big valleys through the higher land.  Here is an example.  The valley we were in was made by men with picks and shovels about 200 years ago.  The huge bridge above simply joins the flat land on both sides!

Sometimes we find interesting things blocking the road - like car bridges.  At this bridge Andrew (Mrs McLeay's brother) has had to get off the boat and raise the bridge for us to pass through.  He then had to lower the bridge back into place before we moved on.

At one of the locks we found ourselves at the back of a long queue, with eight boats ahead of us.  Each boat takes about 10 minutes to get up one lock, so we had to wait about an hour and a half to get to the front of the queue.  However, this was the only time we had such a hold up.  Most of our journey has been really straight forward and the weather has been great.  It has been very warm some days and very cold on other days, but we have had very little rain.