Barging About: Llangollen Canal – Day 1

We set out at 7am, only to discover the M25 was already fouled up, but soon enough we were speeding on our way, enjoying the sunshine. We stopped off at Shrewsbury for lunch and what a fabulous surprise that was, full of beautiful Tudor buildings and all manner of narrow alleyways.

We picked up our home for the next 5 days which was a 50′ steel barge about 7′ wide, weighing approx 20 tons. The boat man spent 30 min telling us how to drive the thing. I can repeat it verbatim “Blahdee bladee bla..“. I hadn’t quite realised my total inability to take on board complex information auditorily. How often in life do we give instructions without finding out whether the other person can understand and retain the information?

Within 5 min of setting off we were crossing Thomas Telford’s famous aqueduct 120′ in the air above the river Dee and the most amazing scenery. Stunning views and an incredible, visionary solution for moving steel and coal out of Wales. We’d never fund it these days.

About half an hour on and we’ve left all the other boats and are pottling along under a green canopy.

Two tunnels later, one 500 yds. long, an amazing achievement before heavy machinery and a huge investment, we moored for the night in splendid isolation (till some numpty decided to join us!). A beautiful curry later and an early night.. Zzzzz

Tags: barge, wales

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 29th, 2012 at 08:33 and is filed under Personal Blog, Travelogue. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.