To be honest, most boaters simply charge through here – got to get to the pontcysyllte aqueduct and the end of the Llangollen!! But of all the places – Whixall is one of the most isolated and yet interesting. So we stopped another day. We got to stroll through the reserve – saw many dragonflies, a hobby and heard/saw some curlew. I also cycled around the area – down the Press branch to see the marina and on down the disused arm. All amazingly quiet, flat and rural. I am amazed that Telford drove his new canal straight through this bog – quite a feat of engineering. They had to employ a moss gang to continually shore up the canal, as the constant draining of the peat meant a drying out and collapse of the canal bank. Once they had put the steel pilings in they were redundant.
this shows the years of canal bank reinforcements – the towpath is lower than the canal 
This is under the heading “notice to boaters” as we used our slow cooker on its lowest setting it seemed to use 300W for 8 seconds every minute or two – the solar seemed to cope with this, putting any energy taken out of the batteries back in. 4 hours later we had a succulent lamb korma. 
Whixall marina – with nice cafe 
One of the few bits of wildlife I actually managed to capture – a reed bunting 
The reserve was well served by walkways, info boards etc 
It may seem odd that they are removing trees but then they weren’t here originally 
Say no more, so I won’t. 
one of the biggest of our natural birds – the buzzard – just before he was chased off by crows