Solace Day 5. Croft Mill Lift Bridge.

Yesterday we left the Llangollen Canal and descended the locks at Frankton on to the Montgomery.  A strange situation, you must book to get on and can only access between 12:00 & 2:00.  This was made more difficult by the fact that we had made a mistake and arrived a day early.  Fortunately a nice man was there checking on things and he allowed us down the locks and two boats waiting at the bottom up.

The blip shows Croft Mill Lift bridge where we moored for the night after having turned at the end of the current navigable section a few hundred yards up from the bridge.

The Montgomery canal is one of the canals under restoration.  When canals slowly ceased being used for commercial purposes between WW11 and the 60s many became un-navigable.  The standard procedure for restoring a canal (and they are all restored by volunteers) is start at the far end and work towards the navigable parts.  This ensures the job continues rather than a "we done well we have got x miles lets call it a day" syndrome.  As a result there are 17 miles navigable near Welshpool and the 7 we were on out of the 38 miles of canal, which was abandoned in 1944.