Chirk Bank Wednesday 28 December 2016

Woke to a clear bright day, we didn’t see the sun until 9am due to the hills, a good frost all round dropping to -5°C overnight and still freezing this morning. Diana wanted to go up Castell Dinas Bran so we set off walking back to Llangollen at 10am in bright sun shine, from the top of the hill the Dee valley was filling with mist and when we returned at 12-30  it was still reasonable clear as can be seen from the photo below.  The reason for taking the photo is to show the Beech hedge will be a right pain in a few years if its not kept well trimmed and what are the chances of that happening, it was taken in the lowest narrow section of the canal and is only slightly wider than a boat.

As the canal above Trevor is often in a concrete channel with vertical sides that stand well above the water level, British Waterways Board when they carried out the work included these stepped access points so that animal who may have fallen in could climb out to safety.

As we got nearer to Trevor the mist got thicker.Coming out from under the bridge into Trevor Basin I can see why the hire boat hit the bank on the far side, right in the ark  where he wanted to swing his bows was full of canoes.
Here is a shot of a map, courtesy of Waterway Routes a digital map company that produces maps and videos of the inland waterways system and shows just how sharp the turn is at Trevor when you come off the end of the aqueduct.

We only saw one canoe today and I only just saw him before I entered the aqueduct, had he been a few yards further away I doubt I would have seen him before we started to cross.

Directly over the middle of the River Dee there is this handle down just above the tow path on the aqueduct. It is there to operate the valve that drains the aqueduct into the river for maintenance purposes .

As we came up the canal yesterday I posted a photograph taken looking across the aqueduct towards Trevor to show the reflections in the water, this is what it looked like today.

The weather stayed quite murky and after passing under the lift bridge it was quite hard to see passed the long term offside moorings  to make sure nothing was coming the other way. Whitehouse Tunnel and Chirk Tunnel are much easier going in this direction, as we entered Chirk Tunnel I could see a boat ahead, we thought we had caught a glimpse of him earlier and we slowly caught him up, as he left the tunnel I heard him put the power on and expected him to be well gone when we exited but crossing the aqueduct we still continued catching him. Again on leaving the aqueduct loads of power but he was making little progress, I think he probably had a load of leaves round his prop, something we have suffered with badly this week. We didn’t go much further just through Monks Bridge 21W to moor on the Chirk Bank visitor moorings for the night.

Today’s Journey   7½ miles in 3 hours with no locks.