nb Ashdown: Further to the Past Week

Sunday, 25th, saw us taking on the other boating holiday makers as we made our way towards Ellesmere. We knew that Ellesmere was having a festival over the bank holiday so we did not want to venture to close until late Monday.

Giant thistle

View at New Marton Locks

On our way up to Llangollen, we passed the locks down to the Montgomery Canal. Passage down the locks needs to be pre-booked by at least by 10am on the day of travel. This past weekend was a bank holiday weekend with plenty of boats cris-crossing the canal, in some cases literally :)

We had enough food to allow us 2 days on the Montgomery. Free from masses of boats. So Andrew pulled out the number to call and booked us down for two nights.

The Montgomery Canal that can be navigated from the Llangollen is currently only 7 miles long. Further up the canal, more waterway has been restored but it is not possible yet to reach the remainder of the canal from the remainder of the network. You could get a boat there but it would have to be trucked in by road. The other option is to hire a boat from the one hire boat company based on this landlocked section. But that is one for another day.
In the meantime we enjoyed the tranquility of a canal where only 12 boats are allowed on at any one time. It was just lovely.

Looking up the canal from our mooring

Canal side mile marker

With only 7 other boats going down the same day as us and most of those leaving the next day, it was very quiet. Just what we needed to recharge those batteries.

Pre-dinner drinks on the towpath

On day 2 on the Montgomery, we cruised as far as we could. We did not spot any other moorings that we preferred to where we had stayed the first night so it was back up the 3 Aston Locks to 'our' mooring spot. I did a bit of nature spotting while the sun was still shining but dinner was inside as it was a bit cooler than the night before.

Almost at the end of the canal. Looks like they are stopping boats from winding here

Finally able to capture on of these Brown Hawkers hovering while we cruised by

Former Packet Terminal and bridge74

The days are noticeably shorter now and the nights are getting cooler. The quilt is now over the summer duvet for that little bit of extra warmth. :(

Cinnabar Moth caterpillar

Sunlit Dandelion

a bevy of pheasant

Sunlit something :)

Convolvulus flower

Banded Demoiselle

Waiting for the fish to bite :)

Saying goodbye to our mooring spot on Wednesday morning we cruised back up the stop lock and made use of the very quiet facilities there rather than in Ellesmere.

Lovely mooring spot

Small Tortoiseshell - getting a lift up the Welsh Frankton Locks

Sheila, from nb Islonian, let us know that they would stay in the Ellesmere Arm until we arrived, just to make sure that we would have a mooring. As luck would have it when we arrived not long after 2:30pm there were a few free moorings, one of which was immediately in front of Islonian. The Ellesmere stop was more for another cupboard restock along with a bit of a walk down memory lane. By the time we eventually wondered in to town, to busy catching up with Jim and Sheila, town seemed pretty quiet. Even the butcher was already packing away his meat at 3:30pm. So we just got a few essentials from town and made a significant donation to Tesco's but we are now fully laden once more. We had intended to stay the night in Ellesmere but Sheila pointed out the building site just behind the trees and mentioned that they had been woken at 7am the previous 2 mornings!! No way was I having any of that, so we moved off and had a lovely early evening cruise to where Jim and Sheila had stopped for the night.