Around the Meres

This really is a beautiful place to moor!  Because it's only a mile outside Ellesmere town hardly any boats bother stopping to moor and, apart from a couple of hire boats who've stopped for a couple of hours late afternoon to use the picnic tables to have their tea alfresco, we've had it all to ourselves.

We've had quite a few (very welcome)  heavy rain showers but in between these the sun's shone and we've been out and about exploring.  1.5 miles further along the canal is Colemere.

It's a lot bigger than Blakemere and we walked all round it on Friday.  It has it's own sailing club which brought back memories of my early teenage years, spent dinghy racing at Leigh Flash beside the Bridgewater Canal.

Yesterday we walked back into Ellesmere and round the mere.

I loved this wood carving/sculpture we found on the woodland walk.  As it was raining at the time the woods were deserted and it was just a lovely place to be.

There were quite a few dog walkers about and, for the most part, Chico coped really well.  He's learning very quickly that if he doesn't feel happy in the vicinity of another dog, he can turn round and we go another way. If there's no other way to go we pick him up and turn him away from the oncoming dog.  This worked really well with 5 dogs and we had a stress-free walk. That is until a woman appeared round a corner with an uncontrolled dog off the lead.  It came bounding over and even though she could see we'd picked Chico up and he was clearly very distressed, she was totally unable to call her dog back and get it under control.  Although she muttered an embarrassed apology, that one incident just about undid all the progress we'd made with the other dogs earlier. We'll have another long walk again today and see if we can get his confidence back.  We could really do with meeting another (patient) boater with a very placid dog who we could practice with. Maybe I'll put a sign in the window next time we're moored in a busy spot.

Ellesmere

Happy Easter!

This morning, after saying goodbye to Jill and Allen on "Rough Grazing", we carried on down to Ellesmere.  There'd been lots of boats going past this morning, all heading up towards Llangollen and when we set off they were queuing 7 deep for the lock.  I'm certainly glad we're heading the other way!

It's not much quieter in Ellesmere. There are plenty of boats out on the main line where we've moored and the arm was almost full when we walked into town.

We've been to the Red Lion for lunch. Their Sunday roast is still as good as it was 18 months ago and the pub was absolutely packed.

Having heard on the towpath telegraph about the beer festival at the White Hart, we called in for a drink after lunch and stayed to listen to the folk/jammin session.

Ellesmere

When we got up this morning everywhere was covered with a thin dusting of snow and although it's been a lovely sunny day it's been a bit parky too, never getting above 5'C. We kept getting glimpses of snow covered hills through the trees and it made for a lovely day's travelling.

We're now moored in the canal arm at Ellesmere. There are a few other boats here, some of which have paid for the winter moorings and have been here for a while.

Tesco have a store here, right beside the canal.  Shopping doesn't get much easier than that and I nipped in just before closing to stock up on fruit and veggies.

There's a Sculpture Trail here at Ellesmere. We might walk round it and take some more photos when we come back in a couple of weeks. In the meantime here's a photo of the "sculpture" which is opposite our mooring.

It's called "Canal Boat" and is described on the website "The landscape can be viewed through the perspective of the canal tunnel and the framework of the canal boat".  Now I know it's supposed to be art, BUT it just looks like a child's climbing frame to me!