A cunning plan?

For some time now Canal and River Trust (CRT) has been showing much greater interest in restoration than its predecessor, British Waterways. There was further evidence of that last week with the announcement that CRT, together with the Inland Waterways Association, is launching a national restoration campaign, drawing attention to our lost waterways. It is supported by the well-known TV presenter Sir Tony Robinson who said: “The waterway network is part of the fabric of our nation but it’s easy to forget that not so very long ago some of our most popular canals were almost lost forever”. We were already in touch with CRT to find out about their new approach to the question of restoration, and have been visited by Richard Parry, their Chief Executive, and Jason Leach, Restoration Manager. We are thinking about how we can follow these visits up, as well as how we can build on the campaign to help move our own canal forward.

We had some very good news about the forthcoming Melksham River Festival during the week. This is a very important event for us, marking the centenary of the Act of Abandonment in 1914, but with the strong message that a hundred years later we are back, restoring the canal. It is also intended to publicise the Melksham Link, and acknowledge the support of the town of Melksham for the project. Such events do of course cost money, and we were worried that we had lost our original intended source of funding. Fortunately, thanks to the efforts of event organisers Paul Lenaerts and Ian Simpson, they have persuaded Leekes of Melksham to step into the breach and support the event. We are very grateful indeed to Leekes for their timely and welcome help. The event will be on September 6th and 7th, so make a note in your diaries!

This week we are meeting Derek Gow, one of the country's leading experts on water voles, to see how we can enlist his help in two ways. First, we need his expertise to be available to us as we have to deal with any water vole colonies along the canal when we are carrying out our restoration tasks. Second, we want to make the canal an environmental asset for the community, so we want to find out how we can make a responsible contribution to the protection of this endangered species.

Chris Coyle