Grindley Brook (Nearly in that Welsh Wales)

On Wednesday evening we had moored on the Llangollen canal opposite Hurleston reservoir that holds 85 million gallons of water which is used to provide both drinking water to the surrounding area and feed water for the Shropshire Union canal.  The reservoir is supplied with water from the northern Welsh mountains which flows into the River Dee and over the Horseshoe Falls at Llangollen and then into the Llangollen canal.  The canal therefore has a constant flow along its length as 12 million gallons feed into the reservoir each day.  This is the feed from the canal into the reservoir.

As there is a constant flow there are overflow channels around each lock and the subsequent water flow can make entry to locks difficult.

The canal is so rural that we passed no towns and even the villages tended to be away from the canal.  We had one lift bridge to operate before Wrenbury – this was a simple manual lift bridge as it served a footpath..

There doesn't seem to be a standard design for stanking plank stores on the Llangollen - we passed five different types today and here are four of them.


At Wrenbury there was a road lift bridge which Karen had to operate with a key which gave access to the controls for traffic lights and the hydraulic lift.

The grey building was originally a mill but is now used as a boat yard and hire boat base…

…and this wharf has been converted to a pub.

It seemed that all the boat traffic was going in the opposite direction to us which helped us as many of the nine locks we went up were set for us.   

There are quite a few residential morrings along this canal; these people live off grid and even have chickens on their boat.

We had one more lift bridge for Karen to wind up manually before we moored for the night outside Grindley Brook.


This is a very exciting canal to navigate as the last ten miles or so are designated a UNESCO World Heritage site and pass through some stunning scenery and two fantastic aqueducts.

These are the nine locks we ascended today.