A Reason for Staying in Bed until 9am

Non working day today and I've been trying, in vain, to get up earlier.

This morning I had vowed to get up at 8.30. I failed, and heard the Today programme to the bitter end.

I'm glad I did because I learned that my favourite bit of architecture/engineering may become a Unesco World Heritage Site.

Neither words nor pictures can do justice to this feat of engineering. A sturdy cast-iron trough with lead, sugar and Welsh flannel joints sits atop a series of elegant archways made of stone and ox-blood mortar.


If you don't like heights then travelling over it by boat or on foot will be a scary experience. On one side there's a railed towpath but on the other side, just a 3" (ish) turn of cast iron.

Then there's a a drop to the valley floor over 100' beneath.

I loved it. Other travelling companions were less enthusiastic, I seem to remember.

Straying back to an earlier thread in this blog, it's probably not very feminine to get quite so excited about an aqueduct, nor about the engineer that designed and built it (Thos Telford) but if I tell you I squealed like a girl when I heard the news...would that make it any better?

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