What no water?

We have enjoyed a week of relaxing and exploring.

I ended up making bread on Monday as neither the farm shop nor Canal Central sell it, but I always have the makings of bread just in case so it wasn't a problem.

We took the "every two hours" bus service into Oswestry to get some shopping, I'm beginning to think I could walk further on a regular basis as buses are getting ridiculously expensive, £3.20 for a six mile round trip. Ray is definitely going to have to sort out his old codgers bus pass this winter!

Amongst our other exploring we went to St Winifred's Well, where a spring rises underneath a half-timbered cottage, formerly a courthouse now a holiday home. Very calm and peaceful.



Our major expedition of the week was to walk to Llanmymnech, which is where the Monty is "in water" again. It is a round trip of about eight miles, some of the towpath is good and some of it is fairly heavy going, at least as footpaths go, it is reasonably level.

At bridge 81, where the navigation ends for us, there is a board across the canal under the bridge to stop you going any further. The canal is in water for about another third of a mile.

You carry on past a nice new looking lift bridge, as it isn't numbered I suspect it is a new one not a replacement, probably put in to allow a farmer access to the other side of the canal now there is water in the way!

Shortly after that you reach the point where the water ends in a bed of reeds by a nice new road bridge and arrive at the stretch that is currently being restored.

The end of the water

Part of the section under restoration



The section currently being restored is just over a quarter of a mile long and the hope is that it will be rewatered next year. After that the canal bed alternates between being a dry nettle filled ditch and a damp reed filled ditch for the next three miles. It's path is still clearly visible, and most of the bridges appear to be intact but there is a huge amount of work to do before there is any hope of the canal being re-opened. The remains of an old wharf where limestone used to be loaded can still clearly be seen. Eventually we reached the water again just before reaching Llanymynech.

A bridge across a ditch!

The remains of the old wharf

Water again!

We completed our walk to Llanymynech and the Welsh border where we stopped at the visitor center for a coffee. The England/Wales border runs down the main road there, some of the houses are in England but as soon as people step out of their front doors they are in Wales. In the days when all Welsh pubs were closed on a Sunday there was one pub that had it's front bar in Wales and it's back bar in England so everyone used to drink in the back bar on Sundays!

After our coffee it was time for the four and a bit mile trek home, we arrived back tired but glad we had made the trip.