Thursday 16^th April 2020

Another lovely morning dawned. Cold with mist again swirling over the surface of the water, but clear skies and sunshine. As on most mornings, there were a few planes passing high overhead although we do not see any more throughout the day.

We had a lovely breakfast of smoked haddock and poached eggs. Trouble was, as sometimes happens, the fish repeated all day.

At 11am we had a quiet few moments as Don was being buried. It is a cruel fact of Corona that many people are being cremated or buried without the send-off they are due. Certainly Don was a popular guy, a native of Middlewich where he had lived all his days and his funeral should have been well attended.

We then moved off, headed for Nantwich and shopping, a thing we were dreading. We watered up above Cholmondeston Lock, doing a wash at the same time and then cruised as far as Hurleston Junction where we moored, ready for the short hop into Nantwich tomorrow.

We had a walk up to Hurleston Reservoir and beside the lock flight. There are tremendous views from the top of the locks across the Cheshire countryside especially in the direction of Crewe and Congleton.

The reservoir is the only reason the Llangollen Canal survives. The section of the Llangollen Canal beyond Pontycysyllte was built as a navigable feeder to supply water to the Ellesmere and Chester Canals. Thomas Telford designed an ingenious solution in 1808 with, beyond Llangollen itself, the construction of a weir in the River Dee such as to maintain a level in the canal. The weir is now known as Horseshoe Falls.

In 1944 the London, Midland and Scottish Railway, the owners of the entire Shropshire Union Canal system, planned to close much of the system, retaining what is now known as the Shropshire Union but excluding the Llangollen Canal. However, because the Horseshoe Falls was a major source of water to that system, the canal from Llangollen to Nantwich, including the great aqueducts at Pontcysyllte and Chirk, was retained purely as a water supply channel.

This action enabled the canal to survive until it was taken over by British Waterways following nationalisation in 1948. With the steady decline in commercial traffic, British Waterways negotiated with the Mid and South East Cheshire Water Board, and the canal is used to transfer water from the River Dee to Hurleston.

Hurleston Resrvoir

Hurleston Reservoir has a capacity of 85 million gallons. The whole length of the Llangollen Canal has a considerable flow of water, that supplies the reservoir with some 16 million gallons per day. A staggering amount.

We spent the remainder of the day sat out on the towpath in glorious sunshine, watching the little birds visiting the feeders we put out whenever we stop.

At one point a massive Antonov cargo plane, the largest plane in the world, passed quite low overhead before turning to approach Manchester Airport. A rare event, planes landing or taking off from Manchester, Britain’s second biggest airport. A couple passing at the time had an app on their phones detailing aircraft overhead. They told us the only planes now fly

ing are cargo planes and the ones we had been seeing in the mornings were most likely en-route from Europe and the Middle East to America.

Day Total: 1 lock; 4 miles; 0 Tunnels; 0 Swing Bridges; 0 Lift Bridges; 0 Boat Lift; Day’s running hours 2.2

Overall Total: 907 locks; 1604 miles; 53 tunnels; 61 Swing Bridges; 17 Lift Bridges; 2 Boat Lifts; total engine running hours 1088.0