Day 18 no locks today but a number of lift bridges, most of these are for footpaths, private tracks or really small roads but one of the ones we had today allows you to stop the traffic, flashing lights and everything! D did most of the five today, the only one J was due to do we were let through by a hire boat who didn’t seem to be able to get their act together. It was noticeably breezy in places. Tried to moor down the Ellesmere arm but it was too busy, had people not been reluctant to moor end to end there would have been space for a couple more boats so we winded at the end (J did this brilliantly with an audience ) and moored just outside the entrance to the arm.

This gave us a ring side seat to see people trying to negotiate quite a strong corner as the wind got up, by the evening there were waves on the water. Found a good deli in the town.

Day 19 dawned with a pale sun which lasted hardly any time and then the wind really go up. Almost immediately after J took over steering from D we came round a corner to find a wok boat completely across the cut. It took us a few minutes to move it out of the way, just managed to get going again and another boat appeared around the corner, I don’t suppose they were best pleased as they must have thought there was no one that close in front of them. A couple of locks followed and fortunately we weren’t too put out by the wind. Later as we were leaving Chirk we had a bit of a rollercoaster ride, we thing it must have been a large log or similar near the bottom of the canal but neither of us can remember anything like it before. The geology must have changed now as the flora is very different, notably enormous amounts of wild garlic; it is a good job it isn’t hot as we would have been overwhelmed. Today also featured two tunnels and an aqueduct (not the famous one).

The flow on the Llangollen canal is really noticeable when you go through a restricted width so progress was very slow, had decided to stop short of the famous Pontcysyllte aqueduct. As we have done very little in the way of locks in the past couple of days felt in need of some exercise and decided to go for a walk despite the windy weather so walked over the aqueduct, alongside the Dee and back up to the boat, just before it started raining.

Later we saw some unusual wildlife – a Mandarin duck pair.