1997 - Narrowboat on the Llangollen Canal

This page describes a narrowboat (more on that below) trip that our family took in June of 1997. We flew into Manchester, UK, and took a cab to Bunbury, about a 20-30 minute ride (Mary says it took an hour) from the airport. There we got our charter boat from Dartline. We spent a week on the boat, going almost to Llangollen, in Wales, and back. The weather didn't cooperate. There was probably only one day when it didn't rain. Luckily we bought rain gear.

Below we describe the route, the canals, locks, and narrowboats, and our trip.

The Llangollen Canal

Canals like the Llangollen date back to before railroads and were used to move goods around. The railroads basically put them out of business, but they've opened back up for recreational boating.

The so-called narrowboat canals have locks designed for boats at most 75 ft. by 7 ft. Now the canals are used for recreational traffic. There's a lot of information about canals at George's Canal Boating pages.

The locks are operated by the boaters. First, if necessary, you raise or lower the water in the lock to the level of the boat. This is done by opening small valves on the lock gates. Here Mary is cranking on one of the valves.

You then open the lock gates and steer the boat into the lock. Here Anselmo drives the boat into the lock.

Once the boat is in the lock, the person at the tiller uses the engine to keep it from hitting either of the lock gates. Another person opens a valve to let water in or out to take the boat to the other level. Here Liz lets the water out of the lock.

Then, she opens the gates and lets the boat out.

Another thing you have to do is open many bridges. On the Llangollen canal, they ranged from very simple footbridges that you open by pulling a chain, to electrically operated road bridges. Some of the most interesting had cranks to raise the bridge.

The designers used aqueducts as a device to avoid having to lower and raise the boats to get across a valley. This is a look over the side as we cross the Pontcysyllte aqueduct (designed by Thomas Telford) near Llangollen. It's a long way down and not much of a wall on that aqueduct!

On the Llangollen, we had to pass through two tunnels. Here's a picture as we are coming out of a tunnel.

This one shows the tunnel in the background as we leave.

Our Trip

We tied up by a town every night and had dinner at a pub to enjoy the delicious beer. Our only regret is that the canal is a little too long for a week's trip. We prefer to have more time to sightsee. In fact, we didn't quite make it to Llangollen. We stopped at Trevor and turned at a winding hole ( a wide area for turning the boats).

By far the biggest town on the way was Ellesmere. In fact, it was the only town that had any shops to speak of.

The most challenging set of locks are the "staircase" locks at Grindley Brook. There are three continuous locks that make up the staircase, and three other locks right by them. It takes a while to get through there. On our way back, we decided to lock through late in the day. Luckily, there's a lot of daylight at that time of year.

We had two canal guides, one by Waterways World, the other by J. M. Pearson & Son (our favorite).

Duck feeding used up a lot of time and bread.

This guy decided to tag along for a while.

We rented from Dartline, based in Bunbury, and booked through Blakes, a broker with a representative in the U.S. This is the second time our travel agent, Jim Wilcox, has set up a trip through Blakes. The service has been excellent.

More Information

George's Canal Boating pages have a lot of information about the British waterways. That's a good place to start, with links to charter companies and information about the canals. British Waterways (the government agency that runs many of the canals) had their own web site. It's now the Canal and River Trust. They had links to boat charter firms.

Given British weather, make sure you take rain gear (we bought some extra at the marina where we got our boat) and, just as important, some waterproof boots. We didn't have any on this trip and suffered for it. You can buy Wellington boots (or "Wellies") in the UK, but you're not likely to find them in the little stores located on the canal-side towns. Other good boots might be the LL Bean-type Maine Hunting Boot.

There's really nothing else you need, aside from a good attitude. The boats are equipped with all of the cooking gear and linens you'll need, except perhaps for towels. Out of our three canal-boat rentals, two have supplied towels for folks coming from overseas. One time we had to go out and buy some.

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