State Visit

Up at 0600 – walk dog, breakfast then away by 0700 – at last, going with the flow, down the Llangollen canal, back to Trevor basin. We left early to avoid the crowds and the forecast of torrential rain at 1100.

And here’s the proof!
past the wharf – all’s quiet . .. .
looking down on the town
Out and around the narrows – going with the flow is soooo different

And then into the basin for an overnight stop. CRT had put stickers on the visitor moorings, commandeering them for a “Let’s Fish” event, 0730-1700 the next day. Not too happy about this as it meant we had to get up early again, to move the boat away. Hmm, even CRT’s own regulations prohibit fishing from visitor moorings and here they are promoting it! (Don’t get me started!!) But we are the compliant type and moved our boat at 0720 – back and tied to some trees. Then we were told the bit opposite Anglo-Welsh is actually a visitor mooring and so we moved there and waited for the Royal Party to arrive!

A view of our original mooring (just to prove that we did move!)
Max & Colin were staying at the Lion Quays hotel and had driven over to Trevor for 10 o’clock. Time to have a look over our wee ship, some tea & coffee and then the transit over the aqueduct – it almost stopped raining!
Colin walks over – taking some action photos! Hopefully the best of, will be sent via email and will appear here later
It did rain, a lot and then some! The river Dee below was a torrent compared to last week.
It’s still a surreal experience, this Stream in the Sky as it was called
Steve happy to drive (still not from the “dodgy” side notice!)
Our guests disembarked and walked back to the visitor centre – we chugged on, in the rain and through the Chirk tunnel – easy this time, going with the flow and no waiting either. All the solar lights come on, thinking it’s night time.
Chirk Bank – we stopped at Chirk and had lunch in the Poacher – dogs welcome! And despite the huge downpour and very muddy towpath, we met Max & Colin for lunch and jolly good it was too – lots of that rotisserie chicken, beer and “port n lemon”!
Not content with a huge lunch – it was time for a huge (or not so in Viv’s case – don’t mention Waldorf Salad!) dinner back at the hotel after cocktails & canapés on board Adagio – very nice.
Sunset at Lion Quays
Some fresh air on the verandah
And yes, despite the spelling mistake, we did get our free drink!
Quite a nice mooring spot, if a bit silted up! We said our goodbyes after breakfast & Max and Colin drove back to Barry, we saw the forecast (rain later) and decided to push off too
A nice morning – the sun came out and it did get quite warm. An easy-ish cruise, down the two New Marton locks and count the bridges down from 17W to 1W. Aiming to moor by the Frankton locks by lunchtime. There were boats coming up a plenty and at the last lock there must have been 10 boats waiting!

Final mooring spot – reversing in to the junction before the locks – hopefully away from the stream of hire boats! Toby’s happy . . . now where is that already started bottle of white wine? What a lovely weekend.