Wednesday, Thursday, Friday             18th - 20th June

                     North Wales - Alston

Robyn writes: Well, we've had a lovely few days of relaxation on the waterways combined with the odd moment of sheer terror when our boat, the "Torlief", got stuck or radically disobeyed Lex or Glen's orders and headed for a bank, bridge or other boat! Thankfully after the first day or so these incidents became much fewer and they are now both fairly accomplished captains!

Wednesday: On Wednesday morning we began our trip back towards Whitchurch (about 20 miles - yes, I know that doesn't sound very long but when your absolute top speed is 4 miles an hour, it takes a fair bit of sailing....) and because we'd already reached our aim of getting to the aqueduct, we knew we could take it a lot more slowly coming back. We headed off a bit after 8, glad to be ahead of the crowd we knew would be coming across the aqueduct shortly, and started to retrace our journey. We stopped near Chirk and secured the boat on a straight stretch of canal, then walked to town. Amazingly, for a lot of the way, the canal is on really high land and you are sitting on a river of water up in the sky looking down at the land below in the valley. Very strange and not at all like Australia where all our waterways are at the bottom of valleys! Chirk was like this, and we had to walk down into the valley from the canal then back up the hill on the other side to where the town is situated (we were still in Wales at this stage). We looked around the town and had a lovely morning tea at a local tea room, got a few groceries to tide us through and headed back for the canal. When we got back, we realized that our boat had moved a bit, and closer inspection showed that it was tied by the central line...then we found a note, telling us our boat had been adrift, and a good Samaritan had rescued it for us! Thankyou, unknown masked man, whoever you were! Lex and Glen realized that the hammer in mooring stakes were not very reliable as when other boats went by (especially quickly) they exerted a great deal of stress on them and eventually pulled them out. From then on we used the curved ones which clipped over the metal edging on most of the canal.

 Farewell to the famous aqueduct

 We walked down the valley and up the hill into Chirk

 Lex taking the boat through the lock

 Quacky

Photogenic heron

We went on again, back through the New Marton locks but this time the crowd had caught up with us and there was a huge lineup of of boats going our way (about 7) so it all took some time. We used the time there to fill up our water tanks and chat to lots of the other canal boat people, and there's always someone to help if (like me) you're a bit confused on what to do. We were lucky with both locks in that there were boats coming upstream when we went through, which halved the amount of work for us as they used our open gate to sail into.

We got back to Ellesmere in the early evening and moored upstream from where we had been the other night. Lex and Glenn went off to explore the area a bit while we got tea ready. For tea the galley crew (Carol and I) produced a delicious meal of Hunter's Chicken, new potatoes and salad, followed by a choice of fruit and yoghurt for dessert. All very nice! We were entertained by a duck which adopted us (I called her "Quacky") and a heron which spent quite some time trawling for fish along our patch of the river and posing photogenically for passersby.

Thursday: On Thursday morning before we left, we had enough time to have a bit of a look around Ellesmere itself - a very nice little village with some amazingly well preserved very old buildings. Lex and Glen went off to climb a hill and Carol and I wandered into the town centre to check out the op shops and a wonderful little deli, where we bought a yummy range of goodies for morning tea and lunch, including one of their famous pork pies for Lex. On the way back I realised I finally had some phone signal so rang Cait to wish her and Mikeal bon voyage as they were within hours of heading off on their plane trip to Rome. Internet and phone coverage has been a problem over the last few days - very patchy!

We set off again with the aim of getting to a mooring near a pub about an hour's sailing time out of Whitchurch. As we had all day, though, we decided to stop at one of the lakes we were sailing past (again, it was strange to be sailing up high on a watercourse and looking down at a big lake!). We stopped at Colemere, which is a natural lake formed at the end of the Ice Age and had a lovely walk right around its edge, admiring the rare water lilies which belong there. When we got back to the boat, we had some lunch before heading off again. We were back into Shropshire, the land of lots of swing bridges which were the main holdups from then on. We reached the bridge near the "Waggoner's Inn", the pub mentioned in our canal book, about 3.30, and wandered up the road to check on it. Unfortunately, as it came into view, it became obvious no-one had eaten there for quite some time.....oh well, we got back into the boat and decided that we might as well head for Whitchurch!

 Forest walk around Colemere

 Apparently these are famous and rare water lilies...

No meal here tonight!

It was around 6 when we got back to just near the marina where our boat needed to be returned the next morning, and, knowing that Carol's car was parked just there, we collected it and headed into Whitchurch itself. It was a few miles, so much too far to walk. We had a lovely meal in the "White Bear" there (huge serves - we were flat out eating them, then waddled out past the hordes of happy English footy fans heading in to cheer their team on) then headed back for our last night on board. The bunks are, to say the least, cramped, so it was good to contemplate that it was the last time we had to squeeze in! (Alas, England went down - didn't see that coming...)

Friday: We were up at 7 this morning to pack and clean the boat, which didn't take long, before heading back to the marina about 8.30. We handed the boat back over and bid farewell to the "Torlief". It was a great way to spend a few days, and I think we're all glad we did it! Mind you, the world is still rocking gently around me ( a trifle disconcerting, to say the least ) so I don't think I've got my "land legs" back yet!

We then had to head for Stoke-on-Trent to pick up our next hire car from "Enterprise". At one stage of the journey we were all at Loggerheads. Then we drove on to the next little village. (Yes, there really is a village called Loggerheads!) Carol very kindly took us to the car hire place and dropped Lex, Glen and I off before heading home to Leighton Buzzard, and she'll be joining us again tomorrow with our luggage. It was extremely kind of her to offer to do this and we really appreciate not having to drive all the way back to get it ourselves.

We three headed off in the direction of Alston in Cumbria (where we are staying for two nights to enjoy the delights of Hadrian's Wall). Along the way, we decided on the spur of the moment to go via the Lakes District, which we realised was really close. We drove along Lake Windemere and managed to get a park at a pub there right on the water where we had a lovely afternoon tea sitting outside and overlooking the lake. From there we drove through the gorgeous little picture-postcard villages and more lakes (including "Grasmere" - almost Gracemere!) and some stunning scenery. We have noted the Lakes District in our "Places we'd like to see more of" list!

After that, the last half hour of our trip to Alston took us right up high over the Pennines, and some more amazing scenery. We hadn't realised, but Alston is on a moor. The hotel we are staying at is two miles out of town, so we booked in around 4, then Lex went for a walk while I washed my hair and caught up on my emails (finally). It's turned into another gloriously clear and sunny afternoon and is quite warm. It's nearly the longest day so at present at 8.20 as I write this it's still very sunny outside and not even near sunset! We've just had a lovely meal in the restaurant here and I think we'll all sleep well tonight being able to stretch out in our beautifully big beds! Our room is amazing - it's huge, with a 4 poster bed and the bathroom is nearly as big again. Rather nice after the cramped little boat! Tomorrow - Hadrian's Wall...