photos from around wales: A bridge too far

Pontcysyllte aquaduct, chirk bridges

On my way to england I visited the aquaducts of Chirk and the more famous Pontcysyllte

The road bridge under the Aquaduct

the road bridge from the Aquaduct.

The Llangollen branch of the Shropshire Union Canal must be one of the most spectacular and scenic canals in Britain. The canal is fed from the River Dee at the Horseshoe Falls just out of Llangollen. You can walk through Darkie Tunnel but beware it is some 1200 feet in length, so a flashlight is recommended, it is one of two tunnels at Chirk, the other is the shorter Whitehurst Tunnel.

A quote in "the Life of Thomas Telford" publication says "...Aqueduct is situated in a finely wooded valley, having Chirk Castle as an eminence immediately above it, with the Welsh Mountains and Glen Ceiriog as a background and the village of Chirk with Lord Dungannon's Ceiriog Bridge occupying the intermediate space. These combined objects compose a landscape seldom surpassed."

The 70 feet high aqueduct built between 1796 and 1801 by Thomas Telford and William Jessop was built, like the Pontcysyllte, to carry the Ellesmere Canal.

The ten circular masonry arches of the structure, each spanning 40 feet, have piers carried between them as pilaster strips. There is no cast iron trough carrying the water of the canal, as at Pontcysyllte. Instead, the bed is of iron plates, bolted together, with the side walls built of stone quarried locally at Pont Faen.

The relationship of the sets of arches running parallel with one another conjures up images of "Roman grandeur" as the architect, Edward Hubbard says in "Buildings of Wales, Clwyd" and one perhaps thinks particularly of the aqueduct at Tarragona, Spain. The view as one walks towards them is certainly romantic, particularly in strong sunlight and has caught the imagination of artists and writers in the past. There are drawings of the aqueduct by G.Pickering and Henry Gastineau of the early 19th century.

The vast amount of material excavated in the late 18th century to form the cutting for the canal was taken to make up the massive embankments for the aqueduct constructed by Telford over the River Dee at Pontcysyllte.

from the Aquaduct one can see the Chirk rail and canal bridges.

THERE was a time when the Bridge Inn used to boast on one side of its sign that it was the "last pub in England",
and on the other it was the last in Wales,
pre 1994 I can remember when half the pub was closed on sundays .

this shot was taken from the field next to the public house

Other bridges I saw on my 3 day tour of England's lake district and York.

.These disused bridges where on a b road that
is now taken over by the m6 motorway

Little Arrow. One of the old copper line bridges used to haul copper from the coniston district copper mines closed in the late thirties.

Ravenglass, way out of the way, I went there after all the hype on what a good steam railway they had all the locos were diesel and its in miniature they had two full size carriages and a made up mining wagon it was not even worth the effort of taking a photo of,. and to say the truth our local steam miniature rail buffs have a better set up in Dolerw park.

Three bridges two over the Ouse as seen from the big wheel near the railway station

The bridge is still in use from the days when these buildings where used for building steam trains. today its a listed building used as a gymnasium and sports hall. these buildings once housed the steam museum pre 1972.