It was the Badgers that did it!
Well, I spoke too soon about our having thirty miles of beautiful countryside to explore! We spent four weeks in Cyprus, and less than a week before we were due to come home, there was an item on the tv news about a breach in the Llangollen canal. ( We received the 6 o'clock News at 8.00 p.m., live each evening, courtesy of the British Forces Broadcasting Service.) It was a tantalisingly brief item, with a picture which was flashed on for such a short time that if you blinked you missed it! But from the description, it sounded as though it was very close to where we had moored the boat.
I wanted to 'phone the marina and find out what was going on. Trev said not to bother. I paced around until in the end he gave in for the sake of peace & quiet.......... I spoke to the marina owner, who told me that there had indeed been a breach, and it was about three miles away from the marina. He said that the water level had dropped by a foot, and that some boats were at rather unusual angles, but, because ours is in the middle, we were floating beautifully, and not to worry. The breach had been damned at each side and so the flow had been stopped. Millions of gallons of water had flowed out on to the neighbouring fields before it was stopped. The Llangollen Canal is unusual in that it is fed entirely by a river--the Dee. This gives it quite a current, particularly near the beginning of the canal. Something I've just learnt is that eight million gallons of water a day flow along the Llangollen and in to Hurleston Resrvoir, which is at the junction of the Llangollen and the Shropshire Union Canals, near Nantwich. This reservoir supplies the Shropshire Union and the Trent & Mersey canals, and also provides drinking water. (Just think of that--some people's drinking water is coming from the canal--you should see the colour of it!) Apparently, the problem was discovered by a boater who noticed the water was flowing the wrong way! So water can flow upstream! Temporary dams have been placed either side of the breach, and a pipe has been put across the breach, This is passing four million gallons of water a day over the breach and in to the canal on the other side. So the water level has come up to nearly its proper level.However, this has rather curtailed our activities. We can no longer get up to Llangollen, we only have three miles of canal in that direction between us and the breach, and there is no winding hole there any way, so effectively we're not able to go in that direction. In the other direction we can go six miles, as far as Grindley Brook locks. These are closed for routine winter maintenance. So that is the sum total of canal available to us for cruising, until the locks open again on March 11th! Not a lot.
However, we count ourselves very lucky that we suffered no damage to our boat and that it was in safe hands. Graham, the marina owner, was telling us that when the water level was restored, his son Ian was up most of the night, checking that boats were not getting trapped under the pontoons as the water rose. We don't know where our friend Jane on "Bramble" is. The last time we saw her, before we went away, she was on the other side of the breach. She was trapped by the breach on the Oxford canal at Thrupp in the summer, and BW craned her boat out and put it back in further along the canal. So she's not having much luck! It is said that the breach was caused by badgers burrowing! It should be repaired by the end of March and will cost 0.5 million pounds to repair. As my friend Malc would say, "Heigh-ho, what a to do!". You can read about it here:Sorry, I can't show you any photographs of the breach. We aren't allowed anywhere near.
Home Page