Narrowboating in England and Wales, Part IV

On our last full day, we navigated the Llangollen Canal. Thank the powers that be that we did not attempt this canal on our first day! I think if we had, we would have quit, no joke. It was so curvy but in particular, there were one-way extremely narrow and curvy areas that stretched for hundreds of feet so you couldn't see if a boat was approaching.

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Val took one of Hamish's bikes and rode ahead to police the boat traffic and that worked well especially when someone from the opposite direction sent someone our way as well to coordinate. The scenery however, was fabulous and well-worth the trip. Wales is gorgeous.
Castell Dinas Brân

We spent a few hours in Llangollen (pronounced something like: shthangoshthin with a lot of spit sounds on the sh's, there are no L sounds to be heard):
This translates something like: "little shop next to the River Dee in Llangollen".
The tourist steam train station
A horse-drawn canal boat just like in the olden days
Can't keep this boy out of the water
Nice art near the River Dee

Then we headed back to the boat so we could turn around, get through all of the crazy one-ways and get to a pub for dinner. We docked near the pub and the canal ran adjacent to a busy road so some of us decided to partake in an extra pint or two to assist the sleeping process. I will admit the experiment worked well.

On the last morning, Craig and I were counting down the bridges before our end destination: Trevor. We had about an hour and a half trip in total. Even though the kids (especially Owen) truly enjoyed this trip, I must admit that life on a 62 foot narrowboat for seven days sailing through a 12 foot wide canal (or less) is not my preferred method of living. A shorter time period and a shorter boat might make me change my mind and I think we would all be up for it again over a weekend. I remember just thinking how nice a proper (read: long) shower would be (especially for Evan and Finn) and how much I wanted to get the dirt out from under my fingernails. I am a princess under all of this facade so maybe Ishmael isn't such a good name for me... And so, dear readers, in the spirit of my epic tale, it is only fitting to end it with the last sentence of the truly epic sailing tale, Moby-Dick:
"It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan."
Hmmm... now there's something to ponder. Good thing I didn't read that before setting out on this adventure!