July 7, 2015
Llangollen, Wales: Of boats and parades
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WE SPENT our day off cruising along the narrow Llangollen canal and across the Pontcysllte aqueduct - an astonishing bit of engineering from the 19th century.
Our boatman was in love with canals. I asked whether he had been born too late. Had he been born earlier, he could have spent his life on the water.
"No, thanks," he said. "You can't imagine the disgusting conditions they lived in. The boats were damp and dark and permanently dirty, and there were rats attracted by the cargo. The boatmen were always sick because of where they lived and the lack of hygiene. And from drinking canal water. They were coarse and illiterate, because since birth they had been on the canal. They'd known no other life."
I began to see that romance so often dies in the cold air of reality.
The Eisteddfod procession was still going on when we got back. It's big news in Wales, and big enough elsewhere that visitors come from all over the world. The streets were lined with craning spectators. Among them earlier in the day had been Prince Charles, who as Prince of Wales and who struggled through his investiture in Welsh, pretty much has to come.
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