Travels With My Aunt

I’ve left Aunty behind for a few days, and traded her in for a brother in law and a grumpy old jack russell. I driven the caravan to North Wales to finish the Offa’s Dyke long distance path. We started this in South Wales five years ago, but other things got in the way of finishing it. Well this time it will be finished.

We thought it would a great idea to walk over the Pontcysylte aquaduct through to Llangollen to take some distance of the next days walk. And it was a great decision, the views over the aquaduct were great, and 7 mile stroll to Llangollen was a delight.

Pontcysyllte means ‘the bridge that connects’, and after walking across it I’d recommend the experience to everyone. Here are a few facts from poncysyllteadeqduct.co.uk.

There are 18 piers 126ft high, and 19 arches each with a 45ft span.

To keep the aqueduct as light as possible, the slender masonry piers are partly hollow and taper at their summit.

The mortar was made of oxen blood, lime and water. Kind of like treacle toffee.
The aqueduct holds 1.5 million litres of water and takes two hours to drain.
The structure is 1,007ft long, with the River Dee running beneath it.
The work was undertaken by Thomas Telford and supervised by the more experienced canal engineer William Jessop.
The first stone was laid in July 1795. It was completed in 1805 using local stone.
This is the largest aqueduct in Britain. It’s fed by water from the Horseshoe Falls near Llangollen.
The water runs through an iron trough that measures 11ft 10ins wide and 5ft 3ins deep.

I like walking along canals, everything is so peaceful and slow. There’s no need to rush, and plenty of time to see everything.

As the sun was getting low in it light up a light show of caddis flies and midges along the length of the canal.