28 December, 2004

Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, Llangollen & World's End

Considering I grew-up in North East Wales, it's perhaps surprising that barely know the Dee Valley upstream of Chester.  My childhood seemed to focus on the coastal belt, and I've only been to Wrecsam a couple of times.  Hence, though I lived within ~50km of today's destinations for 18 of my first 19 years, today's trip was new to me.

I'd seen the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct from the Chester-Shrewsbury railway, but had never actually visited it, so it was a (very belatedly) obvious venue for an afternoon walk with my mother. Having parked by Trevor canal basin, we followed the towpath across the Aqueduct to Froncysyllte, looking down 38 m to the very full River Dee. We followed the canal on to the Newbridge railway viaduct, but it didn't seem productive to return along a main road through a rather industrialised ex-mining village, so we returned to Trevor along the canal.

Somewhere else of which I'd heard but never visited (or even added to my mental map of the area) was World's End, north(ish) of Llangollen, so we drove back over the 'Llandegla Moors', stopping at each for a few photographs. We also passed 'one of the most haunted places in the UK', Plas Teg, near Mold. I had been there before, but almost twenty years ago.