Messing About on a Boat


I suppose it was inevitable we'd hire a narrowboat whilst on holiday: memories of long past holidays where we'd gone on an annual 'booze cruise' with friends were reactivated by looking out over the Llangollen canal from our holiday cottage and waving madly to all the narrowboats passing by. Then we found there were several boating festivals being held and a trip to the first one at Maesbury sealed our fate. That and our proximity to one of the seven wonders of the UK canal system: the famed Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, a prospect so tantalisingly close that we knew in our hearts that just a trip to see it would be nowhere near enough.

A few enquiries at the boat festival revealed that a trip to Trevor (or Trefor in Welsh) was the best place to go and hiring a boat for the day would be easy peasy so long as we chose to go midweek. This wouldn't be a problem, so then we kept a close watch on the forecast to see which day looked the most promising weatherwise. We only had to wait a couple of days for everything to be set fair.

We had a wonderful time and here's a short video clip of our ride back to base over the aqueduct. Hear NAH mumbling in the background and the wind blow! See how a mere six inches of pure iron and no railings stop us from tumbling to our fate! Marvel at how far the River Dee is below us!


Comments

  1. Damo30 September 2010 at 07:38

    Looks like a great trip, I've only been on the Norfolk Broads in a boat, not quite as dramatic!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Joanna30 September 2010 at 10:22

    Got vertigo just looking at your film ;)

    Love that photo of the shadow of an aquaduct - same one?

    Joanna

    ReplyDelete
  3. HappyMouffetard30 September 2010 at 18:36

    Oh gosh. I've been at the bottom looking up, and I think we might have walked across it, but at least there's the railings on the path side. It makes my stomach churn to think about looking over the other side.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Gwenfar's Lottie30 September 2010 at 19:21

    that looks soooooo cool. It's definitely gone onto my to do/see list. I love that shadow of the aquaduct pic VP.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Nutty Gnome1 October 2010 at 12:17

    Great video VP - brought back memories of going across there in a canal boat when the girls were little....I kept a VERY tight hold on both of them!

    The aquaduct shadow photo is quite wonderful!

    ReplyDelete
  6. VP1 October 2010 at 20:40

    Damo - the Norfolk Broads was my first ever boat trip when I was a student. We had a little sailing boat too and we got becalmed a mile or so from the hire boat. It then started to snow (it was the Easter hols) and we had to row back to the boat. It was a great holiday!

    Joanna - yes it's the same one. The links have some great pictures of boats going across, this was the only way I could do the same whilst actually going over it.

    HM - I found it worse walking over even with the railings there. It was a very windy day!

    Gwenfar - it's a fab thing to do. We've had a brochure from the hire company today and are most tempted to go for a whole week next year :)

    NG - after I took this film, I then got up on the seat to take a shot of NAH sterring the boat. I had to get down again very quickly!

    ReplyDelete

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