Great Falls

 

Yesterday afternoon we walked along the banks of the Potomac to the weir above Great Falls.

 

The river is very quiet at this point.

 

The bed of the Patowmack canal - built in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century with a view to improving navigation on the Potomac river to enable barges to bypass the rapids at Great Falls is  still quite complete here and is impressively built.

 

We then walked down to the first overlook of the rapids - the water level was quite modest and there were kayakers and paddle boarders below the Falls.

 

 

It is interesting to compare these pictures with those that we took a year ago when we visited Great Falls when a heavy snowfall was melting across the region and swelling the river..