Walking a Fine Line : Pontcysyllte Aqueduct

On Saturday I did something that I had long hoped to do and that was to walk along the narrow path beside the Llangollen Canal over the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct. I first heard about this huge feat of Georgian construction (1795-1805) on a school Geography field trip to North Wales exactly 50 years ago. We were travelling from Norwich to Snowdonia and as we passed along the Dee Valley on the A5 through Llangollen Mr Powell told us about the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct.

The Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and Canal World Heritage Site is an 11 mile linear corridor from Horseshoe Falls in Llangollen to Gledrid in Shropshire. The Aqueduct was the first great masterpiece of the civil engineer Thomas Telford and formed the basis of his outstanding international reputation. It is the tallest navigable aqueduct in the world at 126 feet 8 inches in height and stands on 18 tapering stone piers and has 19 arches which carry a narrow trough of iron plates for 1,007 feet. The trough holds 1.5 million litres of water and its name is pronounced Pont-ker-sulth-tay which means “the bridge that joins”.

We parked at Trevor Basin where there’s a Visitor Centre, Boat Hire and Boat Trip businesses, and the starting point for pedestrians to walk over the Aqueduct. My views of Trevor Basin :

And so we set off over the Aqueduct and here are my views of it from all directions :

9 comments on “Walking a Fine Line : Pontcysyllte Aqueduct”

Martin Greenwood says:

March 19, 2017 at 9:28 pm

Hi Barbara. You make me feel guilty because I have never visited the aqueduct even though it is not far from here. I will put that right this Summer. A biography of Thomas Telford has recently been published which was serialised on R4. His mark is too be seen throughout our locality. See you soon! Martin