Battle swans are nothing new. Here we see a fine eighteenth century ceramic portrait of two innocent nudists (or perhaps not so innocent, who am I to say?) being harassed by a swan. I should not have to say this, but let’s make it clear: even if a couple of hot nymphs get naked in the woods for a little sapphic nookie, there’s no excuse for avian rape. Swans, can’t trust them anywhere. So that was your introduction to the…
This morning we moved the boat down to Etruria Junction, where the Caldon Canal branches off to Froghall. We are moored between the Etruria Industrial Museum and a statue of James Brindley, canal engineer. Looks like Brindley is popular with the local pigeons, who are probably in the pay of the geese. The Etruria Industrial Museum has the only working steam driven bone mill in the world. It was used to grind up animal bones for bone china, but unfortunately…
Best. Tunnel. Yet. At the top of Heartbreak Hill is the Harecastle Tunnel. The first tunnel was constructed by Brindley (actually, I think he had some navvies helping) and was built between 1766 and 1777. It was a mile and three quarters long, and only had room for boats going in one direction at a time. There was no tow path, so boats had to be ‘legged’ through – that is, a team of men lay on their back on…
Halfway up Heartbreak Hill. It sounds like a line from a Country & Western song, doesn’t it? Here I am still Half way up Heartbreak Hill And when I reach the top That’t where I’m gonna stop The rest would be the usual sordid tale of marital infidelity, alcoholism, and suicidal depression. All things considered it’s amazing that C&W singers have any energy left over to write music. Heartbreak Hill is the name given in the canal community to the…
Actually it was Midwich, not Middlewich, where space aliens impregnated all the nubile women with silver skinned telepathic children (see The Midwich Cuckoos aka Village of the Damned). Still, they sound the same so we’re locking the door and wearing tinfoil hats tonight just in case. All those -wich towns are the same anyhow, or at least they have one thing in common. No, not space aliens, salt. Droitwich, Nantwich, Middlewich, and even good old Sandwich were all centers of…
We spent another day today dodging rain and coming down through the last nine locks on the Llangollen canal. We are now back on the main branch of the Shropshire Union canal, just north of Nantwich, where we were eight days ago. However, we are back in the land of decent mobile Internet, so I can upload more of the photos from Llangollen. First some of the highlights of the town itself, then more from the Eisteddfod. Welsh is normally…
We put in another long day of traveling today. We have already visited most of the towns on the Llangollen canal on the way up, so we don’t need to do the tourist stuff on the way down. We had a couple of unscheduled stops, though. We had just come down the Grindley Brook flight of locks and I was coming out of a bridge. There was rental boat was coming the other way, right in the middle of the…
This post covers the last two days, as I was busy last night. Actually, we’re going to start two evenings ago, to reveal the most sinister news about Llangollen. Take a close look at this sign. At first glance it looks perfectly normal: this way to the dragons, steam train, canal boats, toilet, and parking. It’s the sort of thing you might find in any dragon-infested tourist trap. Look again. See that rectangle where something has been covered up? There…
It turns out that an Eisteddfod (pronounced Eye-Steth-Vod, plural Eisteddfodau pronounced Eye-Steth-Vod-Ah-Fuck-Welsh-Is-Hard-To-Pronounce) is not a feral crumpet after all. It’s a singing and music competition and festival. There is a Welsh National Eisteddfod, which features Welsh music and is held in different places, and the International Eisteddfod, which has performers from all over the world, and is held in Llangollen every year in the second week of July, which happens to be now. More on that later. We arrived in…
So we went to Chirk first. To get there there was an aqueduct, closely followed by a tunnel, both of then single track, but we were able to get through without delays, unlike the two locks this morning where we were delayed by a party that seemed to think that narrowboats should hunt in packs of three. Chirk aqueduct would probably be famous if it were not so close to an even better one at Pontcysyllte, and the fact that…