Pontcysyllte Monday 26 December 2016

Yesterday evening we had our Christmas dinner in full festive spirit, except I have just realised we didn’t have any crackers.

The canal here is very shallow and we woke with a bit of a list on,  I had to push us out  about 4 foot from the side to get on an even keel. As I could see the bottom quite clearly I tested the depth all the way across with my boat pole. The red marker just visible is the 3ft marker.So the maximum depth on this section of canal this morning was just 3ft. and as we made our way towards The Jack Mytton pub we hit things on the bottom several times.  Once through New Marton Lock things improved greatly and we were able to get above 2 mph again.

Chirk Bank has an interesting display of painted pots on the off side, most of them look like chimney pots to me, but pleasantly painted. The morning had been mainly sunny but now the clouds were gathering and it felt a bit cooker although in practice it didn’t fall below 6°C.

I found it quite slow going crossing Chirk aqueduct, in all the times I have crossed it I have never noticed this stone work on the adjacent railway viaduct before, it was here that we entered Wales, but I didn’t see Passport control.
I thought I was going to come to a standstill as I approached the far end of Chirk tunnel, it was just like trying to drive uphill. We did clear the tunnel just before the boat coming the other way arrived.

Chirk Marina looked full to bursting point, its hard to see how boats get from one end to the other. Not long after this we were at Whitehouse Tunnel, much shorter than Chirk so much lighter so you could see the way that the tow path is built above the water so that the water can flow round the boat easier. A short way past the tunnel is bridge 27W known as Irish Bridge, just through the bridge is a very sharp left turn, for some reason this boat thought the bend would be a good place to moor his boat, so when leaving the bridge you now have to turn very sharply to get round.

We wanted to moor before the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct as we were pretty sure there would be no moorings in Trevor with all the hire boats in. There are a couple of Shropshire Union Society 48 hr moorings but in view of another forecast storm and some very tall trees we pushed on under the lift bridge and moored on the offside at the end of the water point, not something I would normally do, but there are two water points and we have only seen 3 boats on the move all day, so it is very unlikely that 2 will turn up wanting water at the same time before we leave in the morning.

Today’s Journey     8¾ miles, 2 locks in 4 hours.