A retired couple from the United States who were looking forward to their first Christmas on their canal boat will now have to stay in a hotel after a huge sinkhole opened up in Shropshire.
The giant hole emerged in the Llangollen Canal in Shropshire on Monday, leaving several narrow boats stranded in the hole or teetering on the edge of a drop.
Geoff and Pamela Poole were just three boats away from the breach and said their boat started listing. Ms Poole told the BBC that their neighbours woke them up by knocking on the door at 4.20am on Monday.
She said: “The whole boat was listing and everything had fallen. I had literally just watched How the Grinch Stole Christmas last night, and I saw the Christmas tree on the floor with broken ornaments.”
The pair had been planning to spend their first Christmas on their boat and had been on it for just two-and-a-half months.
Ms Poole said: “We have the cutest little tree, our bed is all covered in little lights. I’d made a homemade wreath”.
Mr Poole told the BBC: “We literally retired, left two kids back in the States, flew over here, bought the boat back in May and then spent months getting it ready. That’s the end of our plans for the winter”.
Although they will be able to visit family on Christmas Day, the couple will have to spend Christmas in a hotel as they don’t have a spare bed.
Another man told of his narrow escape from his listing canal boat in the middle of the night. Bob Wood, 75, had been sleeping on his boat when he woke up in the middle of the night to use the toilet.
He said: “I got up and thought, ‘We are leaning a bit’. I thought I was in the middle of a big storm. There was the sound of a lot of water.
“I opened the back door to see why we were tilting and realised it was not raining at all, and it was the water running away under the boat. I jumped on the back and stepped off, and that bit was going down at that second. The back went eight feet in the air and I landed on my front.”
More than 10 people were rescued after the sinkhole opened up. Shropshire Fire and Rescue Service declared a major incident after the “significant breach” on the Shropshire Union Canal in Chemistry, Whitchurch, on Monday morning.
Three boats were caught up in the sinkhole, measuring 50m in length and width, according to the service. Aerial images showed one boat partly hanging over the drop into the hole.
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