Blogger Sven Latham took a one-way canal holiday on an Anglo-Welsh boat last week. He travelled with friends from New Mills to Trevor on the Llangollen Canal (a one-way trip), and has written up their week here:
Last weekend I returned from the most peaceful, relaxing holiday I’ve had in a long time. It featured water, bridges, locks, sunshine, cows, tunnels, aqueducts and far too many ducks for one week - and I loved it! ... It’s definitely worth taking a canal holiday if you want a reasonably relaxing break (not too relaxing - there are locks and bridges after all!). Hope for good weather and just enjoy yourself! We did, and I’m already looking forward to the next one.
His 'skipper' Chris has a photo blog of the trip here.
They were in the nick of time, passing the site of the Llangollen Canal breach only a few days before it happened.
Sven says it's a trip 'mostly uphill'. Well, it probably felt that way at the end, but clearly he's forgotten Bosley Locks and 'Heartbreak Hill' (which were all downhill).
I met Sven at the blogger's dinner last December. He started Blogwise, the UK blogger's directory (which any canal blogger ought to register with).
Here's Sven's route on Canalplan:
Total distance is 95 miles, 7 flg and 69 locks. There are at least 13 moveable bridges; 15 small aqueducts or underbridges; 3 tunnels and 2 major aqueducts. Made up of 94 miles, 5 furlongs of narrow canals; 1 mile, 2 furlongs of broad canals; 69 narrow locks. This will take 52 hours, 35 minutes which is 6 days, 4 hours and 35 minutes at 8 hours per day.
Incidentally, try the new 'virtual cruise' facility on Canalplan (at the bottom of the route) - it's really neat!
Andrew, cheers for the link. I managed to lose all the original maps from when we planned the holiday, and hadn't discovered Canalplan - realised when you posted it that we were indeed going downhill most of the way. It was only the latter part of the holiday that everything went back up towards Llangollen.
I'll post an update this evening with links to yourself and Canalplan.
D'log - sorry about that. The directory is filling up with spam faster than I care to think about. I should have a solution to that within a couple of weeks, and you should then be added.
Posted by: Sven | Tuesday, 13 June 2006 at 11:14 AM
Just added by blog to Blogwise... got this message...
"There are currently 49658 blog(s) in the queue. Your blog is expected to be added within 168 day(s)."
He needs a few summer interns, to sort out the backlog, I think.
Posted by: D'log | Tuesday, 13 June 2006 at 06:36 AM