Whitchurch
Once you’ve brooded over the peat bog, you only have another five and a half miles before arriving at the market town of Whitchurch. At 10,000 people, it’s the largest town on the Llangollen Canal. It’s also quite pretty and has both a large Tesco and Sainsbury, a farmers market the first Saturday of the month and an annual boat rally in August. There’s also a launderette in town, many restaurants and even a short branch of the canal that the local canal society hopes to extend further into town. There’s also a boat hire at Whitchurch, Viking Afloat (booked through ABC).
From Whitchurch it’s only a mile to the Grindley Brook locks. The first three gates make a staircase, followed by an additional three locks in quick succession. The next lock is another mile away, followed by another three locks in under three miles. In fact 19 of the 21 locks on the Llangollen are to be found in the 12 miles before the canal meets the main line of the Shropshire Union, and there are four locks just in the last 1,000 feet before the junction at Hurleston.
You can view this as your penance for the serenity you enjoyed for most of your journey on the eastern half of the Llangollen, or if you enjoy turning locks your reward. At least there’s an ice cream shop only a half mile away from this final set of locks. In fact it’s an entire ice cream factory.
Incidentally, if you want to start your trip at the eastern end of the Llangollen, there are two narrowboat hires at Swanley Bridge Marina, Dragonfly and Marine Cruises, a little under two miles from Hurleston.
So that’s the Llangollen Canal, which only exists because of a last-minute workaround and which would have died in 1944 except for the fact that last-minute workaround provided the water for so much of the canal network. It’s confounding how the canal combines the beautiful, the spectacular, the serene and the breathtaking. Even before I traveled the canal, just knowing it existed filled me with happiness and I hope you get the chance to someday travel it.
Transportation
By plane
The closest large cities with international airports to the Llangollen Canal are Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham.
By automobile
Most of the boat hires along the Llangollen Canal are accessible by A-level roads, notably the A5, which runs through the Dee Valley and the Vale of Llangollen. It turns south after the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and goes through Chirk.
The A5 is also the Holyhead road, which runs from Holyhead on the Isle of Anglesey (Holy Island to be accurate) to London. It was designed by Thomas Telford who also designed the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct. The A5 also more or less follows the old Roman/Anglo-Saxon Watling Street. History pervades even when driving a two-lane highway.
The A495 connects to the A5 near Oswestry, a small town south of Chirk. The A495, also known as Ellesmere Road, runs northeast and connects to Ellesmere and then continues to Whitchurch. The A41 and A49 also feed into Whitchurch. So it’s possible to travel to most of the boat hires along the Llangollen via two-lane roads, with the exception of the boat hires at Bettisfield and Whixall Marina at the end of the Prees Branch.
By train
The two train stations that serve the Llangollen Canal are in Chirk and Whitchurch (and Nantwich at a stretch). My impression is that the most direct train service is from Birmingham to Chirk and travel times average about an hour and a half. Train service in Wales is provided by Arriva Trains Wales.
By taxi
I’ve identified several taxi services in Chirk and Whitchurch (see the map above for more information), although you could walk to a boat hire from the train station in either town, about one and a quarter miles from Chirk or about 1.75 miles from Whitchurch.
By bus
There is bus service in Chirk that should get you almost directly from the Chirk train station to Trevor Basin although a little walk would still be required to get to Chirk Marina. This pdf map by the Wrexham borough government shows the public transport options in the area.
Unfortunately I have not found any purely local bus service for Whitchurch, even though it is a larger town than Chirk, so taxis remain your best bet for local travel.