Monday 24th June Wrenbury to Grindley Brook

The weather forecast for Sunday was not good so we decided to stop an extra night at Wrenbury and have sunday lunch at the Dusty Miller.

St Margaret's Church from the footpath

Wrenbury is a charming village with a village green and St Margaret's Church a red sandstone 16th century church. A footpath passes through the churchyard and across the fields to the first Llangollen lift bridge.

Lift Bridge

Walking to Wrenbury from the canal you pass a new housing development on the left. I admit you could hardly call it affordable housing, but it is evidence that given the right incentives developers can build houses that look comfortable and echo the feel of the ancient properties in such a rural community.

The Dusty Miller pub sits at the point where the river Weaver crosses the Llangollen Canal. It dates back to the opening of the canal, but the site was used as a mill dating back to the 16th century. Sunday lunch was very nice if a tad expensive, but maybe we are spoiled by the standard of the carvery at the White Swan (Mucky Duck) at Fradley Junction.

It turned out that the extra day layover was a good idea as Sunday contained very strong winds and was a rainy washout. However we awoke on Monday to blue sky and sunshine with lessened hurricane winds.  Having had our first experience of lift locks on this stretch, it was fascinating to watch those experienced and hilarious to see 2 chaps of advanced ages with no experience (they had obviously had assistance in previous lift locks as they sat in the centre of the cut pumping their horn hopefully awaiting a CaRT volunteer), however another boat coming through the lock helped them and gave them a quick lesson.

Monday saw us travel the six miles from Wrenbury to Grindley Brook. The ten locks included a three lock staircase at Grindley Brook. Although the staircase is manned by a CaRT volunteer, he had gone to lunch when we arrived so we were helped through by Keith and Ian, two single handed boaters we had met at Quoisley Lock. We met them at each lock as they leapfrogged each other up the locks, the first one setting the lock for the second boat so they could motor straight in. We sat and had a beer with them once moored at Grindley Brook. It turned out that Keith was from Beeston, not far from where Jan was born. It was obvious that both Keith and Ian had spent some time traveling the waterways, Keith told us he had been living on his boat for 13 years.

Evening meal at the Horse and Jockey - local ham, free-range eggs and hand-made chips (yum said Jan). Nice open-plan pub inside and dog-friendly too.

The Llangollen Canal gets its water from the river Dee at Horseshoe Falls. The flow of water feeds Hurleston Reservoir at its junction with the Shroppie, giving the canal a noticeable flow from west to east. This flow equates to an extra 200rpm on the engine to maintain our normal cruising speed; this was very noticeable from the battle against the wind on the previous stretch.