The canal end of town: the wharf, the horse-drawn boats and the walk to the Horseshoe Falls

The river is the loud thing in Llangollen: the Dee runs through the town as white water, Grade 2 to 3 by the reckoning of Whitewater Active, which rafts it from Bridge Street, and that is what most people photograph. The canal is the quiet thing, and it is barely a hundred metres away. From Llangollen Bridge, Wharf Hill climbs to the wharf, and there the water is flat, the boats are tied up and, if the timing is right, a horse is standing on the towpath waiting for its next trip.

What the World Heritage Site is, and where it starts

People say "the aqueduct" when they mean the World Heritage Site, and it is worth getting the shape of it right. The Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and Canal World Heritage Site was inscribed in 2009 and covers 11 miles, about 18km, of canal: from the Horseshoe Falls west of Llangollen, through Wrexham county, to Gledrid Bridge near Chirk Bank in Shropshire. Three counties, two countries. The aqueduct is the famous part and it is not in Llangollen at all: it stands in Wrexham county, about five and a half kilometres east of the bridge in a straight line. The start of the whole thing is the other way, upstream, at a weir on the Dee. This walk goes there.

The wharf and the horse

The Horse Drawn Boat Company works from Llangollen Wharf, and it says visitors have taken trips from here since 1884. Its 45-minute horse-drawn trip goes out along the feeder and back: every 30 minutes in the school holidays, roughly hourly in the week at other times and half-hourly at weekends, at £12 for an adult and £6 for a child on its own price list. A two-hour horse-drawn trip goes on to the Horseshoe Falls at weekends and on selected weekdays from late March, for £17.50. For the aqueduct there is a motor narrowboat called Thomas Telford: a two-hour trip from the wharf that finishes over Pontcysyllte at Froncysyllte, with a courtesy coach back to town, £19 for an adult. Seats for that one are released four weeks ahead.

Cadw lists the wharf building itself as the Canal Museum, also known as Llangollen Wharf. These days it is the tea room, which bakes its own cakes and scones and has tables outside where you can watch the horses between trips.

The towpath to the falls

The Canal & River Trust publishes this as one of its own walks: Llangollen Wharf to the Horseshoe Falls, 3.2km or 2 miles. The railway calls the stretch from Berwyn back to town a gentle 45-minute stroll, so allow about an hour each way to the falls. It is level, because it is a towpath, and it shares the first stretch with the horse-drawn boats, so step in when the horse comes past. The Trust adds that the water here moves at about 2mph, because this canal feeds the rest, so you may see a current.

The Trust's route picks out the landmarks. Past the moorings of Llangollen Basin, the A542 crosses at Tower Bridge, almost a mini tunnel. Pentrefelin Bridge, Llangollen Canal bridge number 48 in Cadw's listing, comes next, with the ruins of Valle Crucis Abbey just to the north. From Ty-Craig Bridge the towpath shares a lane with cars as far as the Chainbridge Hotel, and there is a viewpoint over the Chain Bridge, the river and Berwyn station. Then King's Bridge, which crosses both the Dee and the canal: Coflein dates it to 1902 to 1906 and says it was named for the coronation of Edward VII, and Cadw's listing places it just west of the hotel, which tells you that you are nearly there.

The Horseshoe Falls

The falls are not a waterfall in the usual sense. They are a weir, a 140-metre semicircle built across the Dee at Llantysilio to push water into the canal. Thomas Telford built it, and the Canal & River Trust says 12 million gallons a day flow from here all the way to Hurleston Reservoir at the far end of the canal, which is why the water that carries boats across Pontcysyllte starts here.

Getting back

Walk back the way you came, or use the railway. Berwyn station, on the Llangollen and Corwen Railway, is close to the Chain Bridge and the Chainbridge Hotel, which sits opposite the station. The Chain Bridge has a story of its own: a flood took the Victorian bridge in 1928, the present one went up in 1929, and Wikipedia's account has it out of use from 1984 until Llangollen Town Council and Llantysilio Community Council restored it; it reopened in 2015. Berwyn to Llangollen is the first leg of the line, so a train back is short, if one is running. Check the day's timetable before you rely on it; the railway runs different services on different days.

The railway's own Berwyn page sends walkers on to Llantysilio church, which it dates to the 15th century and says has a plaque to the poet Robert Browning. Add half an hour if you want it.

Fit it together

The Wharf to the Horseshoe Falls trail maps the route point by point. The half-day canal itinerary does it in this order: breakfast on Bridge Street, the horse-drawn boat, the towpath to the falls, the train back from Berwyn and lunch by the river. If you want the aqueduct too, take the two-hour boat from the wharf on another day, or see things to do for Trevor Basin, where the Canal & River Trust's visitor centre is.