Friday, 25 July 2025

A good use of time to write an update whilst sitting in the minor injury unit at Oswestry. More knee saga – how old injuries come back to bite you as you age! Not particularly painful but swollen and immobile, which isn’t easy when you want to jump on and off the boat. Nor very practical to sit with one leg up trying to steer the boat.  R already has his work cut out operating the locks so the least I can do is stand at the helm.  Except I can’t. And yesterday,  unlike us,  we decided to do a long cruise along the Montgomery canal,  so we were moving the boat for over 6 hours. The Montgomery is an idyllic off shoot from the Llangollen canal, a short distance from the Ellesmere wharf. There is a staircase lock (one lock gate is shared between two locks) followed by two more locks and you have to book a passage to go through them.  A maximum of  12 boats can go up and 12 boats go down daily.  Deciding that two nights would suffice, I then realised that to get to the wharf at the far end would take longer than anticipated.  I had been following our Pearson ‘bible’ last edited in 2016. Since then, the Montgomery canal society has funded lengthening the navigable section a further mile or so.  There is then an unnavigable section before 12 further navigable miles.  I’m not sure who gets on those! Probably canoeists.  The Society is appealing for £50,000 to continue its restoration.  In my mathematical equation I didn’t take into account that the further we go the further we have to come back. I had spied a good pub called The Navigation that I wanted us to moor at,  but only after going the full length of the canal. Hence the day got longer! It was worth it.  What a great pub. 

We sat on a sofa in a room that was akin to a family sitting room and listened to three musicians playing celtic music for over two hours.  The pub wasn’t overfull, a mixture of boaters, holidaymakers and locals. The atmosphere was so relaxing and restorative after rather a long day.  The beauty of the Montgomery was a mix of amazing fauna along the canal edges,  the Welsh hills in the distance and so few boats.  After the Picadilly Circus around the aqueduct and the queues of boats travelling along the cut, it was a joy to have a canal almost to ourselves! I’m not sure how we would have passed a boat in many sections of the Montgomery – a lot of it was single file only with a lot of overgrowth either side of the canal edge.  It is acknowledged to be an area of outstanding beauty and R was fortunate to see a flash of blue as a kingfisher darted by!

Wow,  the aqueduct – that was quite an experience. Not nearly as scary as I thought it would be with just a thin edge between the side of the boat and a 127ft drop. It was a beautiful day and  we didn’t have to queue to get across.  I think I annoyed some canoeists waiting to come across from the opposite direction because we travelled so slowly to savour every moment.  In fairness, I didn’t realise they were waiting to cross.  I thought they were just enjoying paddling around the basin on the far side! My romantic  notions were somewhat flattened by M who was with us.  He put the idea in my head that if a section of the edge fell away,  we’d go with it.  Thus on our return, we cruised at a greater speed! We had travelled on to the basin in Llangollen,  a further hour and a half and moored up for two days on a pontoon with both water and electricity.  What a treat.  That’s when my knee started to swell so although I walked a mile to the Horseshoe falls to see the source of the water for the canal (I think it’s fed by the River Dee, but these details are a bit beyond my pay grade!), the following day I didn’t join the others in a stunning hill walk that they climbed from the town centre.  Llangollen is a very touristic place,  full of quaint coffee and nicnac shops.  It does have a small interesting museum and a steam train,  where apparently you can buy a ticket that includes a sumptuous cream tea for £90pp.  We returned to Chirk, cruising over another impressive aqueduct and through a dark tunnel,  where  our friends  reunited themselves with their car and zoomed away. 

Meanwhile we meandered back towards Ellesmere,  stopping just short of the Montgomery canal. Although busy with traffic along the Llangollen canal,  there is plenty of mooring space.  Interestingly, just about everywhere is restricted to 48hrs mooring only,  so they must anticipate many more boats and want to keep them moving along.

Next week our boat is going to have is bottom blacked – recommended to be done about every three years.  Some people do it themselves but it’s quite a mucky and intensive few days work so I’m happy to hand the job to someone who knows what they are doing! Then we have choices as to where we travel next although I know better than to make a fixed plan! Now the Macclesfield canal has reopened we may wend our way towards it.  We do know that our time of owning a boat is drawing to a close,  but not, I hope, our involvement with the canals. Twice I have heard the words ‘sell the boat’ and then when I asked for a further sign (because I really don’t feel ready to let go of my lovely Naomhog!) the throttle cable broke and now my knee is playing up! Everything is for a season and we’ve had some amazing experiences,  meeting lovely people along the way.  We also realise owning a boat is a bit like looking after a pet. When you leave it,  you want it to be safe and well looked after.  Our idea of being on our boat March to November just hasn’t worked out for so many different reasons.  The freedom and peace of being on the Cut is often replaced with complicated logistical manouvers to get us to where we need to be.  We are the epitome of bag people,  returning to land laden with all the food from the fridge,  as all the electrics get turned off when we leave the boat, and a load of washing,  unless we have been fortunate enough to find a laundrette or a good friend in the vicinity! Alongside the sadness, there runs excitement as to what is next.  And who knows,  it may take quite some time to sell the boat – my advertising to date is a couple of post-it notes in the boat windows.  Not exactly singing it out!

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