We headed over to Chirk, a small town just on the Welsh side near Shropshire and found our B&B in the usual way: first we passed the almost hidden entrance, then a desperate plunge into a side lane, a shuffling six move turn in the lane to get around, and spotting what appeared to be the back entrance, squeezed our way in like a badger down its burrow, hoping we had the right one.
It was a fairly quaint little cottage run by Derek, a retired policeman and his wife Rosemary. We had a comfortable night after dinner at the Boathouse Pub near the marina, and next morning went to a laundromat and supermarket before taking over the boat.
This time it was the “Ruby” (we had hoped we might get the “Mary” !) We were starting to get the hang of the long boats and I picked up a couple good tips from Paul as he manouvred us out of the basin after an altogether more thorough handover than the last one. Also found it useful on this trip to make more use of the bow-thruster – ie the deckie (Lyndal) gets the barge pole out and pushes the bow around by poling on the bottom !
The Langollen Canal had about a one knot flow of current and was more frequented than the Union up in Scotland, so was practically weed free. Spring had advanced with all the trees in fresh leaf so the countryside was quite delightful.
The first afternoon we headed up towards Langollen which is the upper terminus of the canal, but we decided to tie up early so after negotiating a short tunnel and a foot bridge which we had to wind up like drawbridge we moored a little further on and settled down for a pleasant evening.
The next day we crossed the Pont-cellyn viaduct, an iron trough just wider than the boat, the tow path on one side and nothing between you and eternity on the other – quite an experience.
It was the long weekend and every man and his boat was headed up to Langollen so we abandoned the town as a destination and tied up on the first nice reach we came to. Here the canal is halfway up the hillside so we had a green slope with wooly sheep above us on one side and the river valley down below on the other.
In the morning we found the next turning basin and went back over the viaduct, past the base and headed into Shropshire via another viaduct and quite a long tunnel. We filled our water tanks, referred to in ‘canal talk’ as ‘taking on water’ – a procedure which one should do every day if you want your toilets to continue to work. We picked a nice mooring a little short of the two locks which we had to negotiate on the way to Ellsmere.
Lock Day was at hand ! We were in quite a dilemma as to how just the two of us were going to handle this as all the training videos showed crews of no less than four – two on the boat and two working the locks. Well turned out nothing could be easier when there is a bit of traffic, as there was today. The experienced boaters just want to get us novices through and out of the way so you find lots of people to help you. Today we were going down and the procedure is one boat up and one down, so you wait for one to come up, the gate opens and they come out and you go in, gate closed, let the water out and down you go. Since there was another boat waiting to come in at the bottom, when we opened the gates, I hopped back on (Lyndal was driving) and we just motored out and kept going. Five hundred meters on we came to the second lock which worked out just the same way.
We motored past the town of Ellsmere, through another tunnel and found a very pleasant mooring beside Blake Mere, one of a series of small lakes starting with Ellsmere beside the town of the same name. It was such a nice spot we stayed there all the next day as well, a decision helped by an accurate forecast. For wind and rain.
On the Wednesday we motored on down the canal past Cole Mere, the last of the lakes, turned round and went back to a nice spot amongst fields of sheep. That afternoon the weather cleared up and we walked along half a mile to a canal side pub. It was a very wobbly walk as the tow path was not maintained here so we confined ourselves to one beer !
On Thursday it was back through the locks ! This time it was going up. The traffic had reduced to just the one boat waiting on the other side so we handled the locks largely by ourselves, I operated the first and Lyndal drove the boat, and we exchanged jobs on the second. All went smoothly so we were pretty chuffed. The weather incidentally was very English – alternate rain, hail and sun.
We filled the water tank in Ellsmere, getting up to the taps with some difficulty against the wind, Lyndal working furiously with the barge pole – you should get one for Pam, Mike – haha! We did better than the lady we had talked to earlier, who yesterday, in the wind, had gone three times round the Ellsmere basin trying to get to the taps until finally her son fell in the canal and people took pity on them and came out to give them a hand.
We motored back to a mooring we had picked out on the way up, only to find that damn Mary had pinched our spot, so had to moor outside the marina for the night. It turned out to be a comfortable mooring and next day handed the boat back and headed for Gwydyr Forest Park, Barmouth Bay and Snowdonia.
