This week has naturally had a lot of attention devoted to our forthcoming appearance on ITV, and the chance for the Trust to win £50,000 in the popular vote. This is really important to us, in two ways. First we stand a chance of winning a significant contribution to the cost of transforming the landfill site at Studley Grange into an amenity for community as the Studley Wildlife Trail – and second it will be great publicity for the project overall, whether we win or lose (though we want to win!).
Please, this a low cost way of supporting the Trust, so we would ask you to please make yourselves familiar now with what will happen on the day –
Wednesday 26th November.
All the details are on or website www.wbct.org.uk and you can find out more on the People’s Millions site:
http://www.peoplesmillions.org.uk/2014-finalists/west-country-east

Jenny Stratton has been building the publicity campaign. We have been very encouraged by the support we are receiving in this from other waterways organisations. Our friends and neighbours the Cotswold Canals Trust and the K&A are putting their members’ weight behind it, and both IWA and CRT are publicising it on our behalf.
Put the date in your diary, for telephone voting on the day - Wednesday 26th November.
And the behind the scenes work? Well it started on Monday with a day’s filming for the programme. Kath and I were interviewed for the film, talking about the project in general and the Studley site in particular. We are very grateful to Val Melville and Stewart Parsons for organising a group of children from a local school to come to Pewsham, and be filmed finding out about the wildlife that our canal already supports. We are also grateful to the work party teams at Pewsham and Royal Wootton Basset, who responded to a call for a special work day, so that the restoration activities could also be featured in the film.

On Tuesday, a very strong team consisting of Trust directors plus Jock Mackenzie, Ken Oliver, and representatives of Visit Wiltshire, Land and Water Services Ltd, Wiltshire Wildlife Trust and Barker Langham, presented our ideas for the very exciting Melksham Link development to councillors from Melksham Town Council and Melksham Without Parish Council. The purpose of the meeting was for us to inform them of our plans, rather than for them to give any formal opinion, but it seemed to us that their reaction was very positive.

On Wednesday I went to visit IWA Warwickshire branch in Coventry, to bring them up to date on what is happening on the Wilts & Berks; they were very impressed by the scale of what we are now aiming to achieve.

On Thursday we welcomed two senior members of the management team from Hall and Woodhouse to the Peterborough Arms. They spent the whole morning with us, having a look at the pub and our plans for what to do with it. It was extraordinarily helpful to be able to benefit from all the years of practical experience that they brought with them. Lots of good ideas (and a few bad ones that we all had a laugh over), leading us to modify our current thinking in one or two important ways. We are grateful to them.

And Friday? We all went back to pile of emails and other tasks that awaited us after all the activity. Looking forward to whatever next week brings which includes some further key technical meetings on the Melksham Link and an opportunity to meet the Trustees from CRT when they visit Newbury.

Chris Coyle