Chester to Shrewsbury

We only had a couple of short drives today so we spent a bit more time exploring Chester before we headed off. We went to the Roman Gardens then walked along another section of the walls.

Luckily today was a couple of short drives because getting out of Chester was a nightmare. Claire has been using a combination of Google maps and maps.me to navigate and apart from a couple of hiccups it has been working well. Unfortunately a combination of a left turn instead of a right and Claire developing a cold which has turned her brain to mush (This is Claire's description) meant we ended up changing direction 3 times. A 20 minute drive took us closer to an hour.

Our destination however made up for it. Peter had read about the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and Canal and he wasn't disappointed. It is the tallest navigable aqueduct in the world, being 39m high and took 10 years to build, from 1795 to 1805. You can walk over it or take a canal boat and we decided to walk. Claire had a few moments where she wasn't sure she'd done the right thing but we made it. We then walked back by the road so that we could see it from ground level.

The view from the aqueduct was spectacular.

Canal boat traffic jam. It is a tight turn for them and the blue one was literally jammed for a little while. The boatman had to get off and give it a good shove to free it.

The end of the day was almost as bad as the beginning. We are staying right in the city centre which is very convenient but there is a maze of one-way streets which took some navigating, then the narrowest opening to the car park that you have ever seen. We nearly missed it. Our room is at the back which means 2 flights of stairs up, then about 4 steps down, then another 4 up then a flight down. Luckily we only needed to bring up one of our big bags.

Shrewsbury Abbey is just across the river from us so we went there first. Claire was particularly interested because it is the setting for Ellis Peter's Cadfael novels. We had a small guided tour then went into the city to look for somewhere to eat tonight.