Llangollen Wharf and the Horseshoe Falls

0:02 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.

0:31 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.

1:17 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.

2:09 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?

2:35 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.

2:59 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.

3:25 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.

3:55 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?

4:20 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.

4:46 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?

5:14 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.

5:38 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.

6:10 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.

6:44 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.

7:17 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.

8:01 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.

8:48 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. If you've enjoyed these podcasts, please leave a nice review because it really does help other people to find us. And don't forget to follow or subscribe so you're alerted when future episodes are published.

9:24 Thank you for listening to the Water Rd.