Today is Day Three of the Ellesmere festival of something or other. All weekend there have been day-trip boats chugging up and down the canal laden with land-lubber folk looking slightly sea-sick. Yesterday the tiniest of tiny (rowing boat size) steam-powered boats huffed past, with a couple on-board, it has to be said, who looked…
Category: Blatherings
Setting fire to Wales, it is, one embankment at a time #steam #railway #llangollen
One of the rewards at the end of the Llangollen Canal, if rewards there need be, is the Llangollen Steam Railway. Trains that run on boiled water! Well, if truth be told they run on tracks, but it’s the over-excited H2uh-oh that moves them along. Tap water usually, not Perrier. Perrier gives the engine the…
Pontcysyllte & Chirk aqueducts tunnels narrows bunfights and fun #narrowboat #England
Loins were girded, caps were set, hatches were battened, gun-ports opened, charts consulted and sails set. Cardinal Wolsey is, by all accounts, a little too deep in the draught for the last few miles of canal to Llangollen itself, but most of the fun stuff may be experienced anyway by steaming to Trevor and winding…
Days 3 and 4 of the Llangollen canal Expedition: countryside; bridges; tunnels #narrowboat #england
The trials and tribulations of Day Two of the expedition having been gibbered out of our systems, the intrepid explorers, Hutson and Hutson, move on. Days Three and Four feature a bit more of the Llangollen canal without the life-or-death situations. Most splendid. The Llangollen canal is hugely rural, and hugely shallow – the Cardinal continued…
Why I will never again cede control to trained volunteers #cilled #narrowboat #england
Why? Because cilled at Grisly Grindley Brook locks, that’s why. We were about thirty seconds away from disaster, and it was all my fault (seriously). The powers that be – those who have set themselves up as “the powers that be” – train, certify and provide livery & equipment for a lot of very, very nice…
