Bartimaeus

The weather was poor for our first full day in Llangollen.  We set off in to the town dressed for wetter weather than we actually got.  While wandering around we saw tourist signs to Plas Newydd.  We didn't know what that was, but it wasn't far so we went to look.

It turned out to be the home of the "Ladies of Llangollen" - an attraction since soon after they started living there in the 1780s.  We enjoyed the tea room as well as their house and gardens.  After lunch in a cafe in the town we spent some time in the museum.  I was fascinated by the story of the refurbishment of the Chain Bridge a mile or two upstream.

It was also threatening to be wet again today.  We decided to try out another tourist attraction - the local railway.  Despite the pictures of steam trains, today's service was an all-diesel affair.  We enjoyed the bouncy seats and the views of the river and fields.  The fields were full of lambs, often running wildly away from the train.  The four llamas in one field clearly hadn't got used to passing trains yet either.

From the station at Berwyn we could look down at the chain bridge I'd found out about the previous day.

At the terminus at Corwen, we wondered about exploring nearby and getting a later train back.  We spotted one of the train staff coming back from the bakery and settled on a different plan.  We bought our own (early) lunch from the bakery and got back on the train.  I even managed to buy a coffee at the station.

On the return journey, we got off when the train reached Berwyn.  A path from the edge of the platform leads under the railway and directly to one end of the bridge.  The other end being the Chain Bridge Hotel.

The bridge is almost as old as the canal.  In its original configuration, the chain strengthened a wooden bridge built by a local entrepreneur to carry coal, lime and stone from the canal, thereby avoiding the tolls for crossing the bridge at Llangollen.

It has been a suspension bridge for nearly a hundred years, using some of the chains from the rebuilt original.  The refurbishment ten years ago re-used many of the original links, with some new ones added as required.

We were pleased to see that the hotel was open and serving snacks and meals, but we first went around to the back where the canal feeder runs.

We walked upstream to the evocatively named Horseshoe Falls.  Unlike its misty name-sake this is a man-made weir with a modest drop built to provide a water supply for the canal.  Fallen trees delivered by floods obscure the full curve.  Each day, around 50,000 tonnes of water is diverted into the canal - no wonder we have had difficulty pushing against this flow from time to time.

We walked as far as Llantisilio Church, but unfortunately it was having its roof fixed, so we were not able to get much of a look at it.  We came back to the Chain Bridge Hotel for coffee (and scone in my case) with a view over the bridge.

By the time we were ready to leave, it was sunny again but the next train wasn't for nearly an hour.  We enjoyed the two mile walk along the towpath much more than waiting for a train.  This time the llamas were dozing together in their field, unperturbed by us passing by.

After a short shopping trip for various essentials and inessentials we cast off for the upstream trip to the limit of navigation for motor boats.  By turning in to the marina and reversing on to the pontoons we were handily placed to take out our recycling, but also at the westernmost point of the connected canals.

In the early days aboard Bartimaeus, we spent some time in the park at Droitwich Spa.  There was a sign in the park with fingers pointing in four directions to Llangollen, Tewitfield, Godalming and Boston.  These were presumably the extreme points in each compass direction.  Boston remains a dubious claim, but we have now completed the set by visiting all four.

On a previous trip I had struggled to turn a hire boat around in this basin, but with the bow thruster, I had no difficulties today despite the gusty conditions.  We didn't think there was much benefit to this location over our towpath mooring, so we headed back through the narrow section again.  I had to wait for a moment for the tour boat coming back to its base, but then had a clear run through.

I thought it might feel like a log flume with the current behind me, but it felt more like a normal canal.  There were no boats coming towards me, I didn't even meet the bold heron we had seen on this section when we came back to the boat yesterday.