Llangollen Wharf and the Horseshoe Falls

The water you can hear behind me is the River Dee at Lancockland

in North Wales and the Horseshoe Falls here is the point at which

some of the water from the river is diverted through a metre

house and feeds the Lancockland Canal.

Welcome to this edition of the Water Rd.

The Horseshoe Falls aren't very high, maybe just a foot or so,

but the curved Weir is impressively wide at 140 metres

or 460 feet. The purpose is to create a pool

of calm water which can be taken into the Metre House and feed

the Lancockland Canal. The falls and the section of

canal between here and the Ponte Casilla Aqueduct were authorised

by Parliament in 18-O four and Thomas Telford, one of the great

names of canal building, was the civil engineer responsible for

the design. The Metre House is a modest

stone building next to the falls, but if you get close to

it you can hear the hum of what's going on inside.

It was built in 1947 to ensure that no excess water was taken

from the river. Sluices and valves control how

much water goes into the canal, and it's drawn through by a

pipe, which starts wide, then narrows, and then widens again.

It uses the Bernoulli effect, which says that water flows

faster when it reaches the narrower section, drawing the

water through. Outside you can see the water

bubbling into the canal. The couple of miles between the

Metre House and Llangollen Wharf are just a feeder.

You can't bring your boat up here, but you can walk the

towpath or you can take one of the horse drawn trip boats.

So I'm with Neil from Llangochlin Wharf and one of the

tricks you do here is the the horse drawn boat trips up the

the feeder. Do you have to have a special

type of horse to do that? Not a special horse but we try

and go for cobs. A bit smaller than a Shire for

the bridge, bridges etcetera. So we try and keep it as a cob.

Nice strong horses, but a little bit smaller.

So you need something that's small enough to get through the

bridge holes, but still strong enough to tow the boats.

Because they're not small boats, are they?

They're not, they're not small boats, but there's not a lot of

waiting to be honest. I mean, I always set up people

with these sort of boats. You can pull them with your

hand. They're so like once they've

once they've started moving the flow basically.

And do they have to be quite shallow?

Because it's not a deep feeder, is it?

Yeah, the flat bottoms where a lot of the boats are V shaped,

these are actually flat bottoms. So what they do, they go up the

feeder. We do a short trip which goes a

mile up and a mile back all the time throughout the day.

And then we do a longer one on a weekend and a Tuesday up to the

Horseshoe Falls. So we take a wrap to the

Chambridge Hotel. It takes about half, 45 minutes

each way. We stop for half an hour and let

them take in the falls and then bring it, bring them back here.

Because the Horseshoe Falls are quite a feature, aren't?

They they're a great feature. Yeah.

I mean, it's, it's the start of the canal system around here.

Obviously the water's pumped in from the D, pumped in at the

pump house at the falls, and then it flows down the canal

here, goes for about 46 mile. It comes through Clangloughlin,

goes through Chirk, crosses the accurate through Chirk, down

Ellesmere, Whitchurch and it goes to a place called

Hurlaston, and that's where the reservoir is for this water

feeder. And the canal here at Llangollen

is quite difficult to navigate actually, isn't it?

It's got lots of narrow bits. Why is that?

Yeah, there's, there are a lot, as I say, because it was a water

feeder. The idea was it was designed

sort of narrow and shallow. There was no, there was no

intention when it was finished this stretch, 1808, there was no

intention of putting boats on here.

It was purely a water feeder. And then what, what happened

sort of 20 years later that they found limestone around a

limestone. So they started mining and

obviously the boats and the wharfs started appearing.

I mean, there's, there's, there's wharfs further down the

canal by the sun, Trevor, around that area.

That's where the the horses would bring it down on trams,

the tramways and then they bring the limestone to the boats from

there. But I mean, these days this is a

really buzzing place, isn't it? I mean Lang Auckland is a is a

real destination. It is, I mean it's one of the

sort of North Wales jewels now, innit?

It's a jewel in the crown for North Wales.

I always think, you know, you've got canal, you've got the river,

you've got the railway. Not many, not many places have

all three together like this. So it's quite a nice, quite a

nice area and. Of course a few days ago we had

loads and loads of rain and it's really showing in the D.

Isn't it? It is, yeah.

I mean, the D the D was pretty low last week and it's it's

filled back up. It's probably the driest summer

I've probably seen here in 12 years.

And I gather that's causing problems for feeding your

horses. It is, yeah.

I mean, obviously with the with the farmers, there's not been as

many cuts of the field this year.

So we are struggling for the feed a little bit at the moment.

So we're we're working hard to get it from where we can, but

apparently the price is nearly doubled this year, so.

So what sort of rota do you have for the horses then?

Do they do sort of what, one day a week because you have a few

haven't? You we have, yeah, we've got 4

at the minute 4 working. We've got one that's just

retired. So we're looking for a, a fifth

horse through the winter. And basically what they do this

time of year, they do one in every four days.

So in the summer they do probably three days a week, but

this time of year it's every 4th day they come in.

And do you think they enjoy the the working?

I think they'd love it. I think they'd tell us if they

didn't enjoy it, to be honest. I mean, we have, we have 1 Oscar

called Tobias. And if he's not working, he's

pretty, pretty grumpy. I mean, he'll, he'll smack on

the dove his his hoof, you know, he just wants to be out working

basically. And people love it because

there's not that many places you can go on a horse drawn boat

these days, is there? No, I mean, I believe, correct

me if you're wrong, but I believe there's only

Llangloughlin and Tiverton down in Devon now doing it.

I'm not, I'm not sort of aware of any other places doing it.

So Ivor, you've just been on the horse drawn boat trip.

What did you think of it? I think the first thing you sort

of experience is it's very quiet and it's a lovely peaceful trip

down the river and nice sort of shady trees all the way down.

So when it's sunny, it's very, very pleasant.

Really, even on a probably even on a hot sunny day, it's quite

pleasant to to go down there. It's quite amazing that one

horse can pull a quite a decent sized boat.

Yes, they were telling us that it was Hercules.

I think he could pull 30 people, but I think they've got, they've

got a horse that's 16 hands high that can actually pull 50

people, which is quite amazing considering the weight of the

boat and the weight of people. Very interesting ride.

Of course, it's the only way you can do that bit of canal by

boat. I think there's a sign up there

saying that no boats are allowed down there.

So we're we're going to do the aqueduct on Wednesday.

So be it. That'd be interesting to see

that. But the horses are amazing,

absolutely amazing. Hercules has very furry feet,

which is which is was quite interesting.

Yeah, it's good, Good trip. The fact that the Lang Auckland

Canal feeds water from the River Dee was an important factor in

saving the canal when the owners of the entire Shropshire Union

network decided to close much of it in 1944.

The London, Midland and Scottish Railway Company kept the canal

open as a water supply channel, allowing it to survive until it

was taken over by British Waterways following

nationalisation in 1948. It was BW which reached a deal

with a water company to transfer water from the Dee to Hurlaston

Reservoir, and you can hear about how that works today in

the previous episode, which is still available, in which we

speak to United Utilities about how the water is transported and

what happens to it next. That's all for this episode of

the Water Rd from Llancochlan. The podcast is produced and

presented by me, Adam Porter. Next time we'll be turning off

the Llancochlan Canal onto the Montgomery, a canal which is

only partially restored, but which has plenty of work going

on. In my humble opinion, I, I think

that it is very doable with this if we are, as we are at the

moment to get to Llanimite within a couple of years and

that will be such a significant move.

And I can't, I can't over over egg how attractive Sally

Monica's in itself is. And the, and the visitor centre

is going there and run by volunteers.

So we've got all this energy going into it.

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Water Rd.

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