Long Weekend in Llangollen

In 2016 the UK Mega was held in Llangollen in North Wales, we were only able to attend the event for the day so didn't get chance to do many of the surrounding caches.  We've been planning to come back ever since.  There was a post on Facebook a few weeks back saying that some of the caches would be archived early next year so we decided to make a concerted effort to get the puzzle caches solved and get over and find the caches.  We had a day's holiday left to use up for this year so we decided to have a long weekend in the Llangollen area.

We set off early afternoon on Friday and stopped overnight in Whitchurch.  We enjoyed a walk around the town and found a few caches.

Saturday morning we got up bright and early ready to start on the 2016 puzzle caches around the lanes of Wrexham.  The plan was to find as many of the caches as we could on our bikes in the short hours of daylight that we had.  

We really enjoyed cycling around the lanes finding the caches.  The weather forecast had been for rain showers throughout the day but we only got caught in a couple of light showers and on the whole the weather was bright and sunny.

Later in the afternoon we headed over to Llangollen.

It rained all night and when we woke up it was raining still, it didn't look hopeful for our bike ride but after we'd eaten our breakfast the clouds lifted and the sun came out.

The plan for today was to do the MEGA series on our bikes which was a linear route of about 8 miles.

Coffee and Cake before we set off

The route was quite hilly so we planned to stop for the caches on the uphills on the way out then on the return leg stop for the ones we missed.  This proved to be a good method and we made very good progress.

Horseshoe Falls in the background

The route was very scenic and is one of the best caching series we've done on our bikes.

Great fun whizzing down the hills

We were about 1½ miles from the end and the sky went very dark, the heavens opened and the rain came down, very quickly the roads became more like a river and we were glad to get back to the van to dry off.  We finished the series in just under 4 hours.

Monday

A bit of a later start to the morning and got up in time to see the sun rise.  The skies are much clearer this morning so hopefully the rain will stay off today.

             Mild enough for shorts!

Trevor Quarry

There were a couple of Earthcaches nearby so we decided to do those first,  Really interesting, I love Earthcaches that involve looking for fossils.

We'd run out of daylight yesterday to do the caches around Horseshoe Falls so we decided to do those next.  We relocated the van and parked in Berwyn to start our walk.

Llantysilio Church

Horseshoe Falls is a weir on the River Dee about 5 kilometres north-west of Llangollen.

We last visited back in 2013, the river wasn't as fast flowing then.

2013

In 2009 Horseshoe Falls and 11 miles of the Llangollen Canal was awarded UNESCO World Heritage status.  This includes the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct .... for non-Welsh speakers this is pronounced 'Pont-ker-suck-tay' 😁and Canal (including Chirk Aqueduct near Oswestry.  The canal was awarded World Heritage status because of the bold civil engineering solutions needed to construct a canal with no locks through such difficult terrain.

It was very pleasant wandering around finding the caches and being a weekday it was much quieter.

The Chain Bridge

The Chain Bridge is a footbridge over the river Dee at Berwyn near.  It is jointly owned by Llangollen Town Council and Llantysilio Community Council and the bridge links the two communities. The current bridge is the third bridge at this location, the previous bridge was destroyed in a flood.  There are some interesting old pictures of the bridges here

On the way home we stopped off at Pontcysyllte to find a puzzle cache that I'd solved by chance a few days ago.

Pontcysyllte Aqueduct

By this time it was starting to get dark and we decided, very reluctantly, it was time to head for home.

A great weekend, we'll definitely be back in the area soon.

A stroll along the Llangollen Canal

Horseshoe Falls

 
Llangollen Canal Trail

The Llangollen Canal Trail  is a series of  80+ caches running from the Horseshoe falls West of LLangollen to just South of Chirk

Our mission for today was to do the whole of the LCT series in Llangollen.  We'd spotted the series at the end of last year and had put in on our to-do list straight away, we'd decided it would be a great series to do on a sunny day, we'd been umming and ahhing about it for a couple of weeks now the nights are starting to draw out nicely and as the forecast was going to be good for today we decided to go for it.

Llangollen

The plan was to get up early to arrive in Chirk for 7am to catch a bus to Llangollen where we'd walk to the start of the series at Horseshoe Falls then back towards the car in Chirk.

Waiting for the bus on a cold and frosty morning

Well luckily all went to plan, apart from one minor hiccup - the bus we'd intended to catch didn't seem to exist so we had to wait around for half an hour for the next one to come, but this wasn't really a problem and it saved us having to take 2 cars with us - the bus ticket was £2.80 single each.

Chirk Aqueduct & railway viaduct behind

 The walk is extremely picturesque and there's loads to see along the way:


We walked through 2 tunnels along the route -  Whitehouse Tunnel (174 metres) and Chirk Tunnel (421 metres)

Chirk Tunnel

 We crossed 2 aqueducts - The 710 foot long and 70ft high Chirk Aqueduct - you start off in Wales at one end and walk into England when you get to the other side.  It was good to have a have a return visit to the Pontcysllte Aqueduct - we enjoyed a walk across it in 2010 after making a detour on our way home from a trip up Snowdon.

Pontcysyllte Aqueduct

One of the prominent landmarks in the area is the Kraft/Cadbury chocolate factory in Chirk.

Chocolate Factory

 Some interesting facts about the factory:



They take delivery of specially picked cocoa beans from Ghana, clean, roast and grind them to produce cocoa mass for chocolate products - They process an average of 180 tonnes of beans per day, generating 40,000–60,000 tonnes of cocoa mass each and every year.  The factory was built in 1969 and the Chirk site was chosen following the demise of the region’s coal mining industry, providing jobs for hundreds of local people. In addition to the all-important cocoa mass, and its derivative cocoa butter, the 150 people working at Chirk today are responsible for producing Cadbury Drinking Chocolate and Cadbury Bournville Cocoa.

Nearly spring!

We were so lucky with the weather, although it started off at -4 the sun shone for most of the day which helped lift the temperature.

The canal has to be one of the best we've ever walked along, a very popular walking area but extremely pleasant and fantastic scenery.

The walk certainly was long, by the time we got back to the car we'd clocked up just under 19 miles and as the tow-path is quite hard underfoot our feet were very tired at the end.  Altogether the walk took us 8½ hours to complete from getting off the bus in Llangollen then back to car.

A brilliant day out that we'll always remember.

View of Chirk Aqueduct

Llangollen Canal