Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and Chirk Castle

We've had a lovely last full day of this trip. We started off at the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, which is a navigable aqueduct carrying the Llangollen Canal across the River Dee in the Vale of Llangollen in northeast Wales. It's a Grade 1 Listed Building and a World Heritage Site on the basis of being  the longest aqueduct in Great Britain and the highest canal aqueduct in the world. It's 360 yards long and 126 feet high but only 12 feet wide; a footpath runs alongside the watercourse on one side which can be a little vertiginous, so that apparently about 1 in 20 people can't cope with walking along it in spite of there being a sturdy railing on one side (happily my Editor and I had no difficulty). It took 10 years to build, being completed in 1805 by Thomas Telford and William Jessop. Seemingly it's still mostly original although naturally it does receive occasional maintenance. The main blip shows it from a distance; the first extra shows it from the top as we walked along it, watching narrowboats proceeding along.

After that we adjourned to Chirk Castle. Started in the late 13th century, it was one of several medieval Marcher fortresses sited on the Welsh-English border to keep the Welsh under English rule. It's therefore an English castle but is now in Wales! It's certainly very imposing as can be seen in the second extra.