Wednesday:
We set off this morning heading away from the aqueduct, knowing there is a winding hole about 15 minutes away. A winding hole (pronounced as in south wind) is a small widened section of canal to allow boats to turn around. With reasonable confidence, we did a 5 point turn and headed back to the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct – why?, because we could.
We got there with no other canal boats ahead of us, but there were about 10 canoes with 10-12 year olds in them getting ready to cross the aqueduct. Their leaders were having a hard time guiding the kids to the edge of the canal to let us through. Judging by the sideways positioning and running into the canal walls head first, they were beginners. One canoe load right in front of us had no idea how to paddle or control the canoe and in the end, their instructor had to grab the bow of the canoe and pull it parallel to the canal. We managed to get past and we were away onto the aqueduct again. Looking ahead and down again was 
just as impressive as the other crossings, just mind boggling. When we got to the other end, there was another boat trying to make a sharp right turn out of the canal from Llangollen. In the end, they resorted to trying to pull the boat round with the bow rope, making hard headway as the boat was bow first into the turning basin wall. While they were trying to turn, we slipped in and, fortunately, our confidence was justified with our turning procedure, and we quickly turned inside them. We managed to berth, to wait for the canoeists to come off the aqueduct, before the other boat managed to finish its turn. With no boats coming towards us, we went back across the aqueduct. 4 crossings will have to do.
Down the canal again and we got to the Chirk tunnel – there were a number of other boats ahead of us, so we were able to follow them into the single way tunnel. We had to wait for about 10 mins to get out of the tunnel because there were boats coming out of the tunnel and boats waiting to go through the tunnel and a major traffic jam.
Just cleared the traffic jam and we were onto the Chirk aqueduct again, reasonably impressive, also had a path on one side, but something looking like a path on the other, so there was no scary look down.
Forever onwards and we were back at the locks we passed through on our 
second day. The first lock took us about 1 hour to get through, there were 3 or 4 boats ahead of us and the lock only holds 1 boat. There were 6 boats waiting to go down through the second lock and for each boat that went down, one came up. Took us over 1 1/2 hours, but it was very sociable talking to other boat people. Fortunately, on the canals, you take your time. We did hear on the radio that there were holdups on the A whatever road – didn’t concern us.
We’ve stopped for the night in a quiet, very sunny (still at 7pm) section of canal.
We set off this morning heading away from the aqueduct, knowing there is a winding hole about 15 minutes away. A winding hole (pronounced as in south wind) is a small widened section of canal to allow boats to turn around. With reasonable confidence, we did a 5 point turn and headed back to the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct – why?, because we could.
We got there with no other canal boats ahead of us, but there were about 10 canoes with 10-12 year olds in them getting ready to cross the aqueduct. Their leaders were having a hard time guiding the kids to the edge of the canal to let us through. Judging by the sideways positioning and running into the canal walls head first, they were beginners. One canoe load right in front of us had no idea how to paddle or control the canoe and in the end, their instructor had to grab the bow of the canoe and pull it parallel to the canal. We managed to get past and we were away onto the aqueduct again. Looking ahead and down again was 
just as impressive as the other crossings, just mind boggling. When we got to the other end, there was another boat trying to make a sharp right turn out of the canal from Llangollen. In the end, they resorted to trying to pull the boat round with the bow rope, making hard headway as the boat was bow first into the turning basin wall. While they were trying to turn, we slipped in and, fortunately, our confidence was justified with our turning procedure, and we quickly turned inside them. We managed to berth, to wait for the canoeists to come off the aqueduct, before the other boat managed to finish its turn. With no boats coming towards us, we went back across the aqueduct. 4 crossings will have to do.
Down the canal again and we got to the Chirk tunnel – there were a number of other boats ahead of us, so we were able to follow them into the single way tunnel. We had to wait for about 10 mins to get out of the tunnel because there were boats coming out of the tunnel and boats waiting to go through the tunnel and a major traffic jam.
Just cleared the traffic jam and we were onto the Chirk aqueduct again, reasonably impressive, also had a path on one side, but something looking like a path on the other, so there was no scary look down.
Forever onwards and we were back at the locks we passed through on our 
second day. The first lock took us about 1 hour to get through, there were 3 or 4 boats ahead of us and the lock only holds 1 boat. There were 6 boats waiting to go down through the second lock and for each boat that went down, one came up. Took us over 1 1/2 hours, but it was very sociable talking to other boat people. Fortunately, on the canals, you take your time. We did hear on the radio that there were holdups on the A whatever road – didn’t concern us.
We’ve stopped for the night in a quiet, very sunny (still at 7pm) section of canal.
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