An exciting week

There is certainly no doubt about the main news this week – the announcement of the imminent start of the restoration of 1.25km of the canal at Studley Grange (between Royal Wootton Bassett and Swindon).  We are all very grateful to Kath and the fundraising team for securing the largest ever single grant to the Wilts & Berks Canal Trust of just under £350k to make it possible.  WBCT still needs to complete the public appeal target of raising £25k (the total is currently just under £10k) so if you can help it would be much appreciated.
http://www.wbct.org.uk/about-the-trust/trust-news/1355-abandoned-section-of-canal-to-be-brought-back-to-life
The main funders are the Viridor Credits, Underwood Trust, Big Lottery Fund, Inland Waterways Association and Wiltshire Council Royal Wootton Bassett & Cricklade Area Board.
There are still some more challenges ahead but it would seem the end of this very long road is in sight.
To give you  an idea of the complexity of this restoration, although the idea is simple - to excavate an infilled section of the canal and use the material to landscape the closed adjacent landfill site - the practical reality at Studley Grange has included the technical challenge of demonstrating to the landfill operator that the restored canal would not affect the integrity of the landfill clay cells, the subsequent lease negotiation, planning consent, protected species issues, and a construction design to reinstate the towpath eroded by a stream and to deal with the watercourse during construction.  You might begin to see from this that the design work was complex and the resulting technical solution set a huge target for fundraising!
A preliminary contract has been let with Land & Water Services Ltd and subject to final design considerations the main contract will be signed shortly with an aim to mobilise by the end of May.
I am looking forward to the work starting at the end of this month and although the site will not generally be accessible we hope that escorted visits will be possible.

You may have noticed that it’s the General Election on Thursday!  For the past few weeks WBCT has been trying to contact as many of the candidates in the ‘Wilts &  Berks  Constituencies’ as possible to try to get their views of the Wilts & Berks project.. The Trust has now published a summary of this information at http://www.wbct.org.uk/about-the-trust/trust-news/1354-election-2015

That’s probably enough excitement for one week!

 

Ken Oliver