SO7778 : Elan Valley Aqueduct near Hawkbatch Farm
taken 4 years ago, near to Trimpley, Worcestershire, England
A 73 mile/117km aqueduct built between 1896 and 1904 connecting the Elan Valley Reservoirs near Rhayader with Frankley Reservoir on the outskirts of Birmingham. The engineer was James Mansergh. It operates by gravity, with a net fall of around 170 feet/50m, giving an average gradient over the length of 1 in 2300. The flow speed is 2mph/3 kph. Rivers and valleys are crossed by bridged aqueducts, using inverted siphons to lose and regain height for the larger drops, with a siphon house at either end and wash-out valves to allow sediment to be removed. Most of the aqueduct was built using the cut and cover method, but there are 15 bored tunnels totalling almost 13 miles/21 km, the longest, Dolau Tunnel, being over 4 miles long (almost 7 km). Initially there were two pipes, each of 42 inch diameter, with two more (of 60 inch diameter) added between 1919 and 1961. Between 2015 and 2019, three new bored sections were built at Nantmel, Bleddfa and Knighton to provide a diversion for their respective sections which had become worn out.
For photos Link.
The North Worcestershire Path was created in the 1980's and is a relatively short long distance path. Originally it ran 27 miles (43 km) from the Kingsford Country Park near Kinver to Majors Green (near Shirley) on the outskirts of Birmingham. At some point after 1997 the route was altered and this resulted in an extra ten miles being added at the beginning. So it now starts in the town of Bewdley but still passes through Kingsford Country Park. This makes a lot of sense and adds a lot of interest to the walk but not everybody has woken up to the fact that it has been extended, so a lot of the information around, particularly on the internet, is out of date. When I ordered a small booklet from Worcestershire County Council in January 2015 I received an edition dating from August 1997 which makes no mention of the extension. I subsequently found that a later edition with the extended route was on sale in some bookshops. If, as recommended, you do the walk in short sections, then at some places car parking can be a real problem and you may find you need to park some distance from the walk. I can’t really recommend reliance on public transport, at least for the earlier part of the route, as the bus services either don’t exist or are infrequent. Recently they have got even worse. There are some sections of the walk which use public roads.