For almost three years now, visiting boats have been unable to moor at Trevor Basin, in the heart of the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and Canal World Heritage Site. This mustn’t be allowed to continue, so IWA Shrewsbury District & North Wales Branch is campaigning to correct this unacceptable arrangement.
Since September 2021 the branch has been engaging with the business boating team at Canal & River Trust’s Wales & South West Region, initially regarding the planning application submitted to Wrexham County Borough Council (WCBC) to permit the relocation of the Anglo Welsh hire base from the western side of the basin to a newly-built facility in the western arm of the so-called ‘tuning fork’, north of Bridge 29, Scotch Hall Bridge.
Despite repeated requests for sight of a layout plan to demonstrate the intended provision of replacement visitor moorings, regrettably none was forthcoming, although in June 2022 CRT W&SW informed us that ‘our design team are in the process of creating a mooring plan of the newly organised basin area, which will show the new visitor mooring designations.’
They added that ‘there is likely to be a short period of reduced visitor mooring capacity during the period of the works, as we transition everything across – but we’ll of course keep that to a minimum.’
In October 2022, still without sight of the promised layout plan, we learned that the ‘reduced visitor mooring capacity’ actually meant nil visitor moorings, but we were again assured that their suspension would be a ‘short term closure’.
Nearly three years later, the ‘short term closure’ is still in place with no apparent end in sight. The new Anglo Welsh reception building and wharf appear to be well advanced, externally at least, but there is no sign of the hire base relocating from its present site and at the time of writing CRT is unable to give us a timing for the move, except to suggest that it won’t be in 2025.
[The new Anglo Welsh facility at Trevor. Credit Mike Haig]
Part of the problem would appear to be that we are fighting on two fronts: the transfer of the hire base seems to be the work of the business boating team in CRT W&SW, but the responsibility for visitor moorings lies with the boating and customer service group in CRT’s West Midlands Region, which manages the water space, even in North Wales.
And here’s an interesting thing… CRT’s own public-facing map of available facilities at Trevor Basin – access the map and zoom in in Trevor – continues to show visitor spaces (albeit incorrectly designated as 14-day moorings) on the towpath side near the CRT visitor centre! This is what that space actually looks like…
[Moorings? What moorings? Trevor Basin, July 2025. Credit Mike Haig]
The campaign continues. If you’ve been affected by the lack of visitor moorings at Trevor or would otherwise like to help our campaign, you could give your views by writing to CRT West Midlands. Its boating & customer service manager is [email protected], and its region director is [email protected]. If you do so, please be kind enough to copy in [email protected]. Thank you.
Michael Haig – Chair, IWA Shrewsbury District & North Wales Branch
